


Record-Breaking

by AlzazelSustrai



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alcohol, Anxious Katsuki Yuuri, Dancer Katsuki Yuuri, Gen, Katsuki Yuuri's Stamina, M/M, Misunderstandings, Not Canon Compliant, Oblivious Katsuki Yuuri, POV Outsider, Pining Victor Nikiforov, Quad Axel (Figure Skating), Social Media, and a party i guess, dubious knowledge of figure skating, the sochi banquet specifically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 40,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25114666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlzazelSustrai/pseuds/AlzazelSustrai
Summary: Yuuri Katsukicanskate really well, when no one is watching. It's only a matter of time before he does something amazing, and the world takes notice.It starts with Phichit, gets to Sochi, and ends, as everything does, with Victor.In which Yuuri does things, Phichit is the MVP (Yuuko a close second), and Victor is smitten.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri & Nishigori Yuuko, Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Phichit Chulanont & Katsuki Yuuri
Comments: 306
Kudos: 1314
Collections: Bnha bookclub's non bnha recs





	1. A Very Phichit Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT FIGURE SKATING BESIDES THE FOUR YOUTUBE VIDEOS I WATCHED AFTER I WATCHED YOI AND YUZURU HANYU COMPILATIONS. There will be inaccurate information and inaccurate depictions of skating. This is purely self-indulgent.
> 
> There is no plot in chapters 4 and 7. The plot snuck up on me around chapter 5, after i'd decided this was gonna be a oneshot compilation. This was meant to be like, four thousand words of Outsider POV on Yuuri and it... got a bit out of hand. oopsies.
> 
> chapters 8 and on partially inspired by kiaronna's [ The Power of Love ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9770471) (please read it it's the best thing ever)

Sometimes, Phichit Chulanont will forget who his roommate is. It’s hard for him to reconcile the soft-faced, floppy-haired, bespectacled sweetheart in the room next to his own with the guy that _was the Junior World Champion._

Like today. Phichit stumbles out of his bed to the smell of coffee, and is greeted with Yuuri in an oversized tee and workout pants, nursing a cup of coffee with a textbook spread out in front of him. A second cup, untouched, sat on the table, waiting for Phichit.

“Good morning.” Yuuri says softly.

“G’morn’g.” slurs Phichit. Never let it be said that he was coherent before his first cup of coffee. He takes a sip out of the mug and he can _feel_ his brain rebooting, 

“Thank you,” he says gratefully. “I think I might die without you.”

Yuuri smiles wryly. “You still might die– Celestino wants us at the rink in half an hour.”

Phichit swears, drains his coffee, then runs back into his room. 

They make it on time, just barely. Yuuri is laughing breathlessly as they get to the rink, head thrown back and cheeks rosy from running. The hockey players had just begun getting off the ice, and Phichit watches as one skates right into the wall, a foot away from where the exit to the rink was. Yuuri hears the thud and turns, mirth still dancing in his eyes.

Yuuri leans over the wall. “Are you alright?” he asks, extending his hand to the hockey player who’d fallen.

Phichit stifles a snicker as the hockey player looks at Yuuri with the kind of expression reserved for those who have seen the divine, before accepting the hand. Yuuri, even leaning across the wall, hauls the hockey player and his gear up with almost no effort. 

As they lace up their skates, Phichit watches the hockey player look at his hand with an expression of awe, and knows that he’ll probably never use that glove again. He must be new; most of the other players had learned (somewhat) how to deal with Yuuri Katsuki. With glasses. Phichit really looked forward to when they would meet Yuuri Katsuki sans glasses. Maybe one of them would break a bone.

“Alright, quit dawdling, on the ice!” Celestino calls cheerfully.

…

Later that afternoon, Yuuri practices his jumps while Celestino works with Phichit. Correction: while Celestino _tries_ to work with Phichit. Said skater had abandoned any pretenses of listening to his coach, watching his rinkmate land jump after jump without even the slightest wobble.

Celestino notices his distraction, but instead of yelling at him for it, smiles fondly.

“If only we could get him to do that all the time, instead of when he thinks no one is watching, eh?”

They continue to watch as Yuuri moves from practicing his doubles to triples. He goes in order of difficulty– toe loop, salchow, loop, flip, lutz, axel– with nary a stop between. Perspiration beads on his brow, giving it a visible shimmer from where Phichit is standing, but Yuuri doesn’t seem to notice, his legendary stamina clearly in full effect. He glides to his water bottle and drinks half of it in one breath, the long column of his neck on full display.

He repeats his triples again– toe loop, salchow, loop, flip, lutz, axel– and then quads. A perfect quad toe, and then an underrotation on the salchow. With a frown, Yuuri does the salchow again, then a quad loop. The three quads that he had down.

Phichit grabs his phone off the wall and starts recording.

Yuuri does a few figures around the ice, catching his breath, then tries a quad flip. He turns– once, twice, three times, four– and lands with just the slightest wobble. Yuuri grimaces, but Phichit ignores his pessimism in favour of cheering.

His head snaps up, and a blush grows underneath black bangs.

“You were watching?”

“That was amazing Yuuri!” Phichit calls. Next to him, Celestino nods.

Yuuri’s face goes crimson, and he ducks his head. Celestino claps his hands. 

“Okay, that’s enough dillydallying, Phichit, run your SP for me.”

...

On one of the gliding transitions in his program, Phichit glances over to Yuuri and promptly slips and falls over.

From his position on the ice, Phichit watches as if in slow motion as Yuuri pushes his hair off his forehead, glides backward, then, with a flick of a toe pick, launches himself into a textbook-perfect quadruple lutz. No wobble.

“Celestino, did you see–”

“Shhh. He’ll show us when he’s confident in it. Now, get up and practice, Chulanont.”

…

The night before finals week, Phichit wakes up in the middle of the night. He stumbles out of bed, anxiety humming through his veins. He makes it to the hallway when he sees Yuuri’s door open, bed empty. 

The kitchen light isn’t on, which means that Yuuri is outside– probably trying to work off some anxious energy so he can sleep.

That means the rink.

Phichit slips into something warm and jogs to the rink, phone in hand. He doesn’t have a rink key– only the manager and Yuuri have keys. To this day, Phichit still isn’t sure how he did it– the manager is notoriously crotchety and ill-tempered, unwilling to give even a single inch on skate times. Unless your name is Yuuri Katsuki.

The rink lights are on, but in the absolute silence of the dead of night, it feels colder and more desolate than it usually does. The doors are ajar, and Phichit cautiously nudges one wider.

Yuuri is skating compulsory figures, figure-eights and circles. He’s been here for a while– there’s a looseness to his movements, an easy relaxation, that is only present when Yuuri comes home after midnight, after having been at the rink for hours by himself.

He has headphones in, and he glides to the edge of the rink and presses something on his phone, then skates to the center of the ice.

After a few seconds, Phichit recognizes the program. He’s skating a program that he’d done a few years ago– one that Phichit remembered as if from a dream. He did remember that it was from the first time Yuuri had landed a triple axel in competition, though. Phichit had watched that section more times than he could count when he was learning the axel himself.

The strings of the composition pluck through his memory, half-remembered. But the swells of the music ring silently through the rink, each sound called into being by nothing more than the scrape of skates against ice and the movements of the lone occupant of the rink.

Carefully, Phichit pulls out his phone and lines it up with the gap in the door. He presses record.

Yuuri gets to the part that Phichit was very familiar with, leading up to the triple axel. That absolutely gorgeous step sequence would go into a short glide, which would build up just enough speed for the axel...

But, Yuuri seems to have cut the end of the step sequence, opting instead to go into the glide earlier, rapidly gaining speed. Phichit tracks him carefully with his camera.

Normally, Yuuri didn’t need that much speed to do a triple axel, and now he was going _way_ too fast and he would almost certainly over-rotate it and–

That was not a triple axel.

Yuuri flips so he’s going forwards at the last second, into the beginning of an axel, and takes off. And he nearly blurs out of sight.

Yuuri was spinning fast enough that Phichit wouldn’t have been able to count the rotations if he’d tried. But he doesn’t have to. He knows what a triple axel is, and roughly how fast one has to spin for it. This jump feels an order of magnitude faster.

Yuuri lands almost casually, continuing the routine as if he hadn’t just made history.

Shakily, Phichit stops recording and walks away from the door, heaving deep breaths. When his heart stops pounding and he feels reasonably sure that he wouldn’t shriek, he returns to the door. 

Yuuri’s routine was winding down, a spin capping off the whole piece. He slows to a stop almost dead center, illuminated by the lone rink light. The light turns his hair to ink, his skin to moonlight, glowing in contrast to the dark shirt that he’s wearing. Phichit takes a picture, then loudly pushes the door all the way open. 

Yuuri notices him and jumps, flinching out of the spotlight.

“Phichit! How long have you been there?”

While embarrassing Yuuri is possibly the most adorable thing ever, Phichit knows that it might cause Yuuri to lose more sleep than he already has. 

He looks at the loose-limbed exhaustion that had begun to take over Yuuri’s form, and decides. 

“Just got here– it's way past midnight, and you’ve got finals tomorrow. I needed to make sure you didn’t, like, pull an all-nighter because you wanted to skate.” He shrugs, tucking his hands and phone into his sweater discreetly.

Yuuri smiles, blinking slowly. “Thank you, Phichit. Give me a minute to get my skates off, and then we can leave.”

His phone feels like it's burning a hole through his jacket all the way home.

He makes sure Yuuri gets into his room, then goes to his own and watches the video. Over and over. How even did he manage to spin that many times, so quickly, and land as if it were nothing? How did he get so far off the ground?

Phichit Chulanont did not sleep that night, and fails his math final. He, to this day, regrets nothing.


	2. The Skate that Started It All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> earning my T rating: cussing. mostly by Yuri Plisetsky, go figure. I know how high schoolers swear, and the younger they are, the more willing they are to do it.

Yuuri doesn’t qualify for the Grand Prix his first year in seniors. He does alright in his short program, but he takes a bad spill in his free skate and struggles to finish his program. His second competition doesn’t go much better– he doesn’t get injured, but nerves have him skating like he’s five again. His second year as a senior skater, he doesn’t even try. Instead, he asks Celestino if he can go for the lower-ranked Challenger Series instead. 

His first skate of the series, he’s incredibly nervous going in, and flubs almost all his jumps. But there, he sees. The stands are shallow and not even a quarter-full. There are no rabid fans, hardly any reporters, and one lone camera inconspicuously placed against a wall.

It almost feels like practice, at home. 

His second skate of the series, he does mediocre in the short program– solidly in the middle of the pack. He video-calls Phichit after, who keeps him up later than he probably should have. Phichit only hangs up after someone texts him and he realizes exactly what time it was, after which he apologizes profusely for another fifteen minutes. Yuuri can’t bring himself to hang up on Phichit, so he lets him apologize as his eyes grow ever heavier.

Yuuri wakes up the next morning in a daze, to an early-morning last-minute practice, running on a few hours of sleep and two cups of coffee. It feels familiar, like going to practice after having stayed up watching movies with Phichit, and his hazy mind equivocates the spectators to the people who show up to public practice so they could have the rink after he was done.

Even when official warmups start, he doesn’t even register it, his mind pleasantly muddled from sleep deprivation. When they tell everyone to get off the rink for the first skater, his brain thinks of it only as a water break.

Something in the recesses of his mind, he registers the announcer, and the fact that his music is echoing through the rink instead of through his headphones, but he’s hardly awake enough to pay it much heed. Celestino doesn’t say anything, either, just nods and points him to the center of the rink.

Faintly, he muses, _it’s nice that no one else happens to be on the rink. I’ll just run my free skate, and then the others can start their practice._ Something in the back of his mind told him that that was wrong, but his brain is fuzzy enough for him to ignore the thought.

The music starts, and he lets the sound fill his body and his limbs, suffusing every inch until there is nothing left but the sound of the violins and the story he wants to tell and the feeling of ice beneath his skates. It’s the kind of meditative calm that Yuuri feels when he’s alone in the middle of the night on the ice.

He doesn’t even realize what exactly he’s doing until he’s nearly done with the program, so engrossed in the banality of it all. He comes to with only a spin left in the free skate, which he couldn’t flub if he’d tried. Minako-sensei had trained him too well in dance to allow a mistake on a _spin_. Still, he nearly flinches out of it when the cotton in his brain is suddenly burned away, settling in the pit of his stomach as foul-tasting ashes when he realizes exactly where he is.

He comes off the ice with his shoulders around his ears, the soothing tranquility evaporating like frost before the morning sun. He doesn’t really remember anything about the skate– only the peaceful sensation of a well-worn routine. He doesn’t think he fell, which is really all that he could have hoped for.

Celestino welcomes him with a hug, eyes suspiciously shimmery.

Yuuri flushes. “I, uh, forgot that I was competing until the end. How did I do?”

His coach’s mouth twists into a rueful grin. “You did great, Yuuri. You changed some of the jumps, but you landed them, don’t worry. I’m proud of you.”

The changed jumps… he might have switched the triple loop for a quad, and then turned a triple axel into a combination, the kind of free skating that he would never dream of trying unless he was trying to wear himself out alone.

They sit in the kiss and cry for a very long time. It wasn’t just Yuuri’s anxiety stretching out the seconds– even Celestino had begun fidgeting. The judges whisper among themselves, reviewing preliminary footage.

Finally, the score is revealed. The announcer, having been so bland and impartial before, can barely get the number past her lips.

Yuuri hears the number and freezes, numb with shock. 

Celestino actually cries.

Slowly, Yuuri thaws enough to turn his head towards his coach.

“What?” he whispers, almost inaudible over the next skater’s piece.

Celestino repeats the number.

Yuuri had beaten his own personal best.

He’d won the Autumn Classic.

Not only that, he’d beaten what most people thought to be unbreakable.

The ISU free skate record. Set almost three years previous by Victor Nikiforov himself.

…

That night, in the hotel room, Phichit calls Yuuri.

“How’d your free skate go? I couldn’t find a broadcast, but– woah! Are you crying? Yuuri!”

“Check the ISU website for the score.” Yuuri whispers hoarsely. 

“I’m sure it can’t be _that_ bad, Yuuri!” There’s a pause as Phichit does some googling.

“What the _fuck_? Is this real?” Unable to speak, Yuuri just nods.

“Yuuri! Why weren’t you bragging at me as soon as you picked up? How on earth did you– is there a video–”

There’s a flurry of typing. “Ohmigod, the Wikipedia page for the ISU world records still hasn’t changed– I’m gonna change it right now.”

Yuuri had already broken down and cried twice today, but he could feel another flood of tears brewing behind his eyes.

“Phichit, I–” he sniffles, eyes watering.

“Oh, Yuuri, let it out– you deserve it! I cannot _believe_ you just did that– there’s still no news about it, it’s like everyone was asleep, its because you had to go and break the world record at a competition that hardly anyone cares about–”

Yuuri bursts into tears, and through his sobs, he manages to say, “thanks Phichit.”

Eventually, he falls asleep, Phichit still on the line. That night, the figure skating world was due for a rude awakening, having quite literally slept on one of the most monumental events in skating to date.

 **phichit+chu**  
[image: a photo of Yuuri in profile, alone on the ice. He’s wearing dark exercise clothes, almost fading into the dimly-lit background. His face is pale from a single rink light, shining from directly above him.]

 **phichit+chu** you see this boy? this boy is my best friend. this boy just won his competition at the Autumn Classic. THIS BOY JUST BROKE **@v-nikiforov** ’S FREE SKATE RECORD. HIS NAME IS YUURI KATSUKI. TAKE NOTES.

…

Yuri Plisetsky sits curled up on his chair, absentmindedly scrolling through Instagram. His recommended feed was mostly cats and American rock music, with a couple figure skating threads. He scrolls through one such thread, laughing at fall compilations.

The next post down features an ethereal figure, dramatically lit by a lone rink light.

He almost scrolls past it, but something about the dark-haired figure made him pause. He looks vaguely familiar, but not in the way that champions like Victor or Cristophe Giacometti do. He’s mysteriously alluring, face only in profile. He was probably in one of the fall compilations, Yuri decides. Still, something makes him click “show more” and read the caption.

The next second, he’s hopping out of his seat and tearing out his front door, running straight for the ice skating rink where Victor was still skating with Coach Yakov.

…

Victor doesn’t even flinch when the double doors to the rink slam open. He doesn’t bat an eye when Yuri Plisetsky’s enraged howls fill the rink. He does, however, stop skating when what Yuri had yelled registers in his brain.

He spins around and skates to the edge of the rink, where Yuri is brandishing his phone like a club.

“What the ever-loving _fuck_ is this, Victor? _I’m_ the one who’s supposed to beat you! Yuri _Plisetsky_! Not this imposter Yuuri _Katsuki_!”

The phone screen shoved in his face is open to Instagram, featuring a very artistic shot of a man mostly turned away from the camera. Victor might have called it a candid, but there is not a single person in the world that could look that good candidly. He would know– he’s tried.

“He’s very pretty, isn’t he?” Victor comments.

“No, you moron, read the fucking caption.”

Yakov grabs the phone before he can. Without looking at the screen, he turns the phone off. 

“Yura, can’t this wait until Victor’s practice time is over?” Yakov chides.

Yuri stomps his foot– _actually stomps his foot oh my goodness_ – and yells, “No, this can’t wait! Google the fucking Autumn Classic, whatever bullshit that is.”

Victor frowns, leaning against the rink wall. “That’s Challenger Series, isn’t it? Hardly anyone watches those– Grand Prix is where you go for recognition.”

Yuri’s face is crimson. “Just. Look. It. Up.”

Mila Babicheva skates over, grabbing at Yuri, who dodges out of the way. “What are we looking up?”

Victor smiles at their antics. “The Challenger Series Autumn Classic, apparently.”

Mila pulls out a phone from… somewhere, and types on it. Yakov audibly sighs, having given up on corralling his skaters.

Victor watches as Mila’s expression goes from indulgently amused to surprise, then completely slack with shock. The phone slips from her fingers, and bounces off the ice.

The sound seems to snap her out of her daze, and she turns on Yuri. “Is this real?”

He scowls. “The guy’s best friend posted about it, so it's either a very elaborate hoax or very real.”

Mila shakily picks up her phone and hands it to Yakov. “Look at this, please.”

Begrudgingly, the coach does. Victor watches his coach’s face cycle through the five stages of grief in a matter of seconds.

“Victor.”

“Yes, coach?” He’s only being a little sassy.

“What’s your score for the free skate world record?”

Victor tells him. Yakov turns the phone screen around to show the ISU website, open to a biography page. Right there– the free skate personal best score. Higher than the number that had just left his lips.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” Victor reads, the foreign syllables sitting softly in his mouth. “Is there a video?”

Mila’s fingers look to be working again, as she searches on her phone. After a few minutes, she shakes her head. “Can’t find one just yet, but his qualifying skate for the Grand Prix from last year is up.”

They watch that one, and Yuri Plisetsky’s rage, perpetually hovering at a simmer, boils over.

“What the _actual_ fuck. No one can skate like that and then _break the fucking world record_ less than a year later. He was overscored.” Yuri declares, crossing his arms.

Victor is inclined to agree. Sure, the skater wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t the kind of extraordinary that would be able to get on the podium, much less stomp the World Record as much as he allegedly had. There was a jerky hesitancy to his movements, the glide of his skates rough and not nearly as smooth as it could be, and, halfway through the program, he’d fallen twice on triples already. 

There are elements of a strong skater– the hesitancy that dogged the beginning of the routine falls mostly away during the step sequences, and the spins are probably almost as good as Victor himself could do them. But, it is in no way a winning skate.

“Let me know when the record-breaking video gets posted, okay?” Victor asks Mila, who nods solemnly.

…

A week later, Yakov finds his skaters huddled on the bench around Mila, intently watching a video.

By the time Yakov walks to them, the video’s over and Yuri Plisetsky buries his head in his hands, whispering “what the _fuck_ ” on a loop.

Wordlessly, Mila hits replay on the phone and hands it to her coach. He sits down next to Victor, who immediately watches again over his shoulder. 

The video is poor quality, clearly filmed on a cell phone. It’s titled “Unknown Challenger CRUSHES Nikiforov’s Record.”

The video does not start with the beginning of the routine. Instead, the video begins partway through an Ina Bauer, a dark-haired figure gliding on parallel skates while he bends over backwards. The person holding the camera did a piss-poor job of tracking the skater, and it’s clear that about halfway through, they gave up and zoomed out and just recorded the whole rink. Sometimes, the camera shakes so badly that it’s difficult to make out exactly what Katsuki did.

Still, from what was clearly visible, this skate was absolutely _not_ overscored. The hesitancy that characterized his skate from the previous video is completely absent, the man gliding across the ice as if friction did not exist. There are very few jumps until the very end, the first half being consumed by an intricate step sequence and movement that, even in such a low-quality video, seems to call music into reality. It reminds Yakov of his youth, when the artistic elements of figure skating mattered more than the jumps that are favoured today.

And then the jumps, crammed into the last minute of the routine.

They are very clean, Katsuki hitting a quad loop with less effort than he’d put into his triple toe loop in the previous video. Every jump looked almost easy, as if spinning at several hundred revolutions per minute with blades strapped onto your feet was simply the natural course of things.

The video shakes violently after a combination jump that would have left even Victor winded, and shortly thereafter, before the program reaches its conclusion, it cuts out. The screen then fills with text that apologizes in English for where the video ended, citing that the cameraman’s excitement caused him to prematurely end the recording and then not notice until Katsuki came off the ice.

The video ends, and Yakov can do nothing but watch the autoplay circle fill. He stares blankly at Mila’s phone, which is now playing “Worst falls in figure skating: TW BLOOD.”

Half a minute into the new video, Victor grabs the phone from Yakov’s limp fingers.

He double-taps the left side, rewinding. “Isn’t this Katsuki?” He points at the screen, and everyone crowds back around. 

It _is_ Katsuki, who had attempted a triple lutz and launched himself face-first into the boards. He hits his head, rolls, then scrambles up and keeps skating, blood dripping from his nose and staining his cream-colored costume crimson.

Yuri scowls, his delicate features twisting. “How are these the same person?”

…

 **SkatingScoop**  
“Nikiforov’s FS record broken– was it due to judge bias? Who is Yuuri Katsuki?”

 **IceLife**  
ISU to release Katsuki’s FS video after rescoring with judge panel. No official score changes will take place, unless there are major discrepancies.

> **iceicebabyy**  
>  “Major discrepancies” my ass just say you’ve overscored him and will be changing this dude’s score soon before you announce the record break.
>
>> **firetigermelon3**  
>  **@iceicebabyy** don’t be rude! Yuuri does well at the Japanese nationals he could very well have broken a record!
>> 
>> **iceicebabyy**  
>  **@firetigermelon3** not VICTOR NIKIFOROV’S STANDING FS RECORD
>> 
>> **firetigermelon3**  
>  **@iceicebabyy** I… don’t know how to argue with that actually.

 **Buzzfeed**  
“Top Ten Figure Skaters of the Past Decade” and “Our Picks for who *might* be Able to Dethrone The Living Legend Victor Nikiforov”

> **has3tsuskate**  
>  Excuse me where is Katsuki Yuuri on either of these lists?
> 
> **Ooooohtabek**  
>  Excuse me who?

…

Victor catches Yuri after their rink time is over one day, practicing jumps. It’s a combination that he’s never tried before, one that Victor himself doesn’t do- a quad followed by two triples.

And yet, it looks familiar.

After Yuri falls twice in a row, blond hair in a halo on the ice, Victor finally recognizes it.

It’s the last jump they saw of Katsuki’s program, the one before the video abruptly cut out. The video quality meant that the first jump– a quad– could be any one of the toe jumps, and the second jump probably a triple flip. The third jump is clearly a triple salchow, which is where Plisetsky is stumbling.

That evening, Victor tries the combination. He falls. He doesn't tell anyone.

...

 **phichit+chu**  
I am so proud of my son, Yuuri Katsuki, for his Free Skate World Record– everyone needs to see this video!! #yuurikatsuki

 **IceLife**  
Viktor Nikiforov’s world record finally broken, after three undisputed years. ISU releases highly anticipated Yuuri Katsuki’s record-breaking free skate video. Panel review finds NO overscoring– revised score actually higher than what Katsuki received.

> **iceicebabyy**  
>  I call bullshit no one is better than **@v-nikiforov**
>
>> **firetigermelon3**  
>  **@iceicebabyy** have you… seen the video????
>> 
>>  **iceicebabyy**  
>  **@firetigermelon3** no
> 
> **221bbbaker**  
>  Oohhhh my goddddd i get why he broke the WR now he also broke me why haven’t i heard of him beforeeeeee he could skate on me and i would say thank u #yuurikatsuki
> 
> **firetigermelon3**  
>  **@iceicebabyy** watch it then talk to me.
> 
> **Hamstersindetroit**  
>  I’m so happy Yuuri Katsuki is getting more recognition but watching this video is like… how is this #yuurikatsuki the same guy as the guy who stepped out on a 3T last year in China?
> 
> **iceicebabyy**  
>  **@firetigermelon3** i think i understand now. #yuurikatsuki

 **ShaunaBravo**  
If you can’t handle me at my [gif: Yuuri falling on a triple lutz]  
You don’t deserve me at my [gif: Yuuri landing a clean quad loop]  
#yuurikatsuki

 **has3tsuskate**  
Good job Yuuri!! I knew you could do it!

 **Buzzfeed**  
“The Same Jumps, a Year Apart, by Katsuki Yuuri” by Buzzfeed Staff #yuurikatsuki

 **yuri-plisetsky**  
Hi someone explain who the FUCK Yuuri Katsuki is to me where did he come from where is he studying how did he do that why did he suck so badly last year what changed this year why does he have my name I’m the only Yuri that’s gonna be in mens figure skating how dare he steal my t

 **SkatingScoop**  
Here’s what we know about Yuuri Katsuki– Japan’s Ace?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> does anybody know how to write or format social media posts on here? let me know if this is confusing, i have no clue what exactly i'm doing. I'm also not often on twitter :/
> 
> Shoutout to crone_zone and their social media fic for Haikyuu that taught me the basics of the blockquote function. I still don't know how to do the rest of it.


	3. Victor Nikiforov Loses his Mind

“Yuuri!” Phichit barges into his roommate’s room, flopping on the edge of the bed next to the cocoon of blankets. He ignores the groan that he receives, as well as the posters all along the walls featuring one Victor Nikiforov.

“Guess what?”

Another unintelligible groan.

“You’re trending on Twitter!” Yuuri bolts upright. Or, he tries to. Phichit had sat on his blanket, which meant he tries to sit up, gets caught in his own blanket burrito, and falls back on the bed.

“What?” He rasps, voice hoarse with sleep.

Phichit smiles, turning his phone around so Yuuri could see. He squints at the screen, trying to make out the blurry words without his glasses.

#yuurikatsuki was trending under Figure Skating, just under #ChrisGiacometti’sAss. Apparently, so too was #whoisyuurikatsuki and #FSWorldRecord.

“It’s all probably just speculation on who I am or how I cheated,” mumbles Yuuri, sleepiness making him blunt.

“No! It’s not!” Phichit insists. “Here, I’ll read some of them out to you–”

“No, it’s okay, don’t do that,” Yuuri says. “I should get up.” He motions for Phichit to get off his blankets, to which he poses dramatically before complying.

Yuuri stumbles into the restroom, and soon Phichit can hear the shower running. It has only been a couple days since Yuuri had come back from the Autumn Classic in Canada in a daze, a gold medal swinging around his neck.

Phichit scrolls through the new tweets, and frowns a little. Upon closer inspection, it does appear that a lot of the tweets are wild speculation and accusations of unfairness.

Well. Phichit can’t have the internet talking bad about _his_ best friend, now can he?

He searches for a fun selfie to post on Instagram starring Yuuri, and comes across the video he’d taken just before finals week. With all the excitement around the world record, he’d nearly forgotten about Yuuri’s inhuman feat. Nearly.

Phichit worries at his lip, thinking. On the one hand, he could break the internet with the first successful quad axel landed cleanly in history, by the man who broke a Nikiforov record. On the other hand, he could wait for the drama to die down before he posts it.

The shower stops, and Yuuri steps out soon thereafter, wearing nothing but a loose pair of sweatpants. There’s a towel hanging around his neck, framing the drops of water that fall from his hair down his neck, sliding down his sculpted torso and into the silver-pale lines crossing his waist and hips in delicate Lichtenberg figures...

Phichit swallows, and looks away. Yuuri walks past him, looking marginally more awake, and digs in his drawer for a shirt.

He ends up with a dark blue one, just tight enough to hug his deceptively powerful arms. Objectively, Phichit was well aware that his friend was very attractive. Yuuri just was not aware of it. At all.

At that moment, Phichit makes a decision. If he has to suffer, so too does the rest of the world.

He selects the video, and drafts an Instagram post. 

“I’m gonna make some pancakes, is that okay?” Yuuri calls, walking into the kitchen.

“Yeah, sounds great!” Phichit replies, engrossed in the _perfect_ filter that would recreate the ethereal magic of what he saw that night.

Before he posts it, Phichit is seized by the spirit of honesty. “Hey Yuuri…”

Yuuri hummed an affirmative in the kitchen.

“You know that day I came and got you before finals?”

The sound of mixing slows.

“Yeah?”

“I got there earlier than I said I did and I might have _recorded your quad axel please let me post it_ ,” Phichit finishes the sentence all in one hurried breath. The sound of chopsticks against ceramic ceases completely. 

Yuuri pulls open the door, looking at Phichit, who was still seated below his Victor Nikiforov posters, grinning sheepishly.

“ _What?_ ”

Phichit doesn’t post the video yet, but opens it in his photos and hands the phone to Yuuri.

“I… what?”

Phichit smiles. That wasn’t an Angry Yuuri or a Disappointed Yuuri or a Betrayed Yuuri voice. That was a Legitimate Confusion and Embarrassment voice, which Phichit could absolutely handle.

“I’m gonna post the video of your quad axel, since everyone wants to know who you are now.” Phichit informs Yuuri cheerfully. Yuuri doesn’t seem altogether too opposed to it, though he’s not in a rush to give Phichit his phone back.

Phichit plucks the phone out of his hands and posts the video.

“I’ll come help you make pancakes.” Phichit offers. “I’ll let you know if there are any interesting responses to you making history _twice_ in a week.”

Spoiler alert: He neglects to tell Yuuri about the _most_ interesting response. Perhaps he should have.

…

 **phichit+chu**  
[video: a vertical video in which a dark figure is doing a step sequence. He begins to glide backwards, passing an overhead light which clearly illuminates his face, identifying him as Yuuri Katsuki. Then, he flips forward to begin an axel, spins four and a half times, sticks the landing, then keeps skating.]  
[video: the quadruple axel from the previous slide, but in slow motion.]

 **phichit+chu** you wanna know who #yuurikatsuki is? The man who can do a casual #QuadAxel, that’s who! #figureskating #quadking

> **christophe-gc @phichit+chu** is this real?? Where have you been hiding him??
>
>> **phichit+chu @christophe-gc** yes this is real I filmed him secretly and nearly blew my cover screaming when it happened.
> 
>  **icequeen** omg wtf wtf tHIS IS NOT A DRILL
> 
>  **firetigermelon3** I??? Don’t know???? HOW THIS IS HUMANLY POSSIBLE?????
> 
>  **firetigermelon3** he’s spinning so fast how
> 
>  **v-nikiforov @phichit+chu** accept my DM request!! Does this guy have social media??
> 
>  **angelicA** This has to be fake. A little fake extra motion blur on a 3A will make it look like a quad. I doubt any of those frames are clear enough for us to be sure that its a real quad. If Victor Nikiforov can’t do it, this rando certainly can’t. The second video, allegedly in slow motion, is still too fast/motion blurred for me to believe it.
> 
>  **221bbbaker** holy shit this is HISTORICAL can’t wait to see this guy ratify it at a comp
> 
>  **iceicebabyy** i go on a social media cleanse for 24 hours and THIS is what I come back to– its official, I live on SNS now.
> 
>  **has3tsuskate @angelicA** don’t be mean, who’d put that much effort into faking a quad axel that isn’t even going to be ratified? sit back and shut up and enjoy the first clean quad axel in existence.

…

After classes get out, Yuuri heads to the rink. Today, he skates before the hockey players and after the juniors that Celestino coaches. He’s a little early, so he sets his stuff down on a bench and he puts his headphones in, just to listen to his short program music. Unconsciously, he’s already mapping out what he could change to make it harder– a habit he’s picked up for when he needs to wear himself down.

He closes his eyes, and so therefore misses the collision that nearly happens because two of the junior skaters spotted him coming in and freaked out. Rather than acknowledging the near miss, the two girls huddle together and whisper.

“Ohmigod he’s here!”

“He’s here every week, Kayla.”

“Yeah, but, he wasn’t the _world record holder_ last week!”

A third skater, a boy a little older than the two girls, joins the huddle.

“Is that…”

“Yeah! I’ve met Phichit, who was the one who posted about him.”

“No, I know Phichit, did you see what he posted this morning?”

“No, what’d he post?”

“You’re not gonna believe me if I tell you.”

Celestino claps, startling the youth from their whispering. “Alright, you guys are free to go. I’ll see you guys later.” There’s a knowing twinkle in his eye.

The trio hurry off the ice, and Celestino turns his attention to the handful of juniors left on the ice. The boy doesn’t even unlace his skates before diving for his phone. “Okay, okay, Phichit’s Insta… Here, I got it.”

The three huddle very close on the bench, glancing up at Yuuri, who is still listening to his headphones, oblivious. The boy whispers, “Phichit posted a video this morning, of Yuuri-” he points surreptitiously, “-doing a _quad axel_.”

“No way.”

“Yeah way just watch.”

They watch the video. Twice. They rub their eyes, then watch it again.

“ _No way_.”

Abruptly, one of the girls straightens and begins unlacing her skates. 

“Where are you going?”

“Getting an autograph. I missed my chance while he was the Junior World Champion, I’m not missing out now.”

She digs in her bag, pulling out a well-worn sketchbook and a ballpoint pen. She marches off to the bleachers, where Yuuri is still sitting.

She taps him on the arm. He tenses, then pulls an earbud out. He doesn’t make eye contact with her, looking shyly at the ground.

“Can I–” her voice squeaks. She clears her throat and tries again, her face beginning to flush. “Can I have your autograph, please?”

Yuuri finally lifts his gaze to hers, startled, chocolate eyes wide in disbelief. He looks behind him for a second, as if there was anybody around who would be giving autographs besides him.

He looks back at the girl, then points to himself. “Me?” he asks softly.

The girl cannot do anything but nod furiously, the red spreading across the bridge of her nose. 

“Are you sure?”

She nods harder.

Hesitantly, Yuuri takes the pen and the sketchbook, which is open to a blank page, and writes in tiny, neat letters, a message of encouragement and thanks. He signs his name below it, first in English, then a series of looping lines that must be in Japanese. The whole signature is small, taking up less than a quarter of the page, as if afraid to intrude.

“Thank you,” the girl chirps. She considers something, then clutches the book to her chest and bows at the waist. Luckily, it seems as though it was not improper, as Yuuri gives her a small seated bow back. 

Quickly, the girl retreats, her sketchbook clutched like a prize. Yuuri’s shoulders relax when she’s out of earshot, and he puts his earbuds back in.

Phichit walks in five minutes before their practice is set to begin, but he makes no attempt to even pretend that he’s getting ready. He’s texting on his phone, frantically, one leg bouncing with enthusiasm. He nods at Yuuri, never once glancing up from his phone.

 _Oh well_ , Yuuri thinks. _He’ll tell me later._

…

When the ISU released the video of Yuuri Katsuki’s Autumn Classic Free Skate, Victor Nikiforov had watched it twice through immediately, then practically on loop for the next few days. The first two times, Victor could not pay attention to any of the technical elements– the higher quality video brought with it the sense of powerful grace that Yuuri Katsuki skated with. The known laws of physics seemed to bow beneath his blades, friction hiding behind gravity, which stayed far away from the ice, not daring to touch the skater. Similarly, sound itself seemed subject to his whims– rather than his movement following the music, it seemed as though the music was called into existence by his movement.

Eventually, many times after the first viewing, Victor was able to look at the technical elements, and he was blown away. The grace of the step sequence, the flexibility shown in the Ina Bauer, and the _jumps_. Each one looking effortless, Katsuki hanging in the air for a moment longer than what one would expect, his form clean and neat. They were also all done in quick succession, so many so late in the composition. _The man’s stamina must be unreal_ , Victor thought.

Speaking of the man… the moment his attention shifted from the piece to the person, Victor was entranced. As if the otherworldly skate wasn’t already enough to make Victor fall in love, the man was _gorgeous_.

His face was almost perfectly symmetrical, a delicate nose set in a face with high cheekbones and big brown eyes, accentuated with eyeliner. His dark hair was styled away from his face, a study in contrast against the blue-white ice. His costume for this program was blue, panels of different shades contrasting with cutouts that made him look like a shower of falling crystals every time he jumped.

After Yuri Plisetsky had walked in waving around an Instagram post, Victor followed the owner of the account.

Phichit looks to be a fairly competent skater himself, and his Instagram is filled with aesthetically-pleasing shots, with planned periods of bright colors mixed with soft ones, and high-contrast photos with hazy ones. Almost half of his posts include or feature Yuuri Katsuki, who looks beautiful, mysterious and ethereal, like he couldn’t possibly exist in real life. 

Yuuri Katsuki doesn’t belong on earth. He belongs with the stars, with the celestial bodies that humans could only hope to reach.

For so many years, Victor has stood at the pinnacle of the figure skating world, alone, watching as people clawed their way up, never even coming close to him.

Now, Victor has caught a glimpse of the figure skating universe. Victor stands on a mountain peak– Yuuri Katsuki stands above the clouds. 

Victor has aspirations, now. There is something for him to work towards– someone to which he can aspire to stand next to. He is no longer waiting to play on the same field as someone else– he is working for it.

Victor’s phone buzzes. He has post notifications on for Phichit’s account. Victor taps on the notification, then waits impatiently for the post to load.

The wait was absolutely worth it.

There is a figure, clad entirely in black. As soon as the video begins to play, Victor knows it’s Yuuri. That breathtaking musicality is unique to him, and Victor is immediately entranced again as Yuuri passes under a light to do a step sequence, fresh-snow-skin glowing next to space-dark-hair.

And then he jumps.

Victor stares blankly at the video as it begins again. He swipes to the next panel, which is just the impossible jump, in slow motion. Yuuri is spinning fast enough that he’s still a blur.

He doesn’t know how long he sits there, rewatching the video, but his door slams open.

Victor tears his gaze from his phone, bleary-eyed. Yuri Plisetsky stands in his doorway, eyes wide and phone out.

“What,” he whispers, “the _actual fuck_.”

...

Phichit cannot believe that he is texting _Victor Nikiforov_. He accepted the DM request, thinking it was just a fan page, before clicking on the profile and seeing that it was _Victor Nikiforov’s verified Instagram page_. 

He’s asking about Yuuri, questions about his skating routines, and Phichit carefully sticks to answers that reveal only what Yuuri practices with Celestino. No need to tell someone when Yuuri would be all alone, even if that someone is the _most decorated figure skater ever_. 

Nikiforov seems mostly curious, without the bitterness Phichit might have expected from the guy who’s record just got broken. 

“Chulanont, get your skates on!” Celestino hollers. Phichit puts his phone down, and misses the next message that he is sent.

 **v-nikiforov**  
How did he improve so much in such a short amount of time?

Two hours later, when Phichit gets back to his phone during his break, all that greets him is a notification that says “this message has been unsent by the sender.”

…

Victor looks at his hands blankly, his phone sitting on the couch next to him.

 _Why did I ask that?_ He thinks despairingly. _Clearly, it wasn’t an appropriate question, and now Katsuki’s friend won’t ever talk to me again and I’ll get blocked and then I won’t get to speak to the skater that has brought the only hint of real competition that I’ve had in years– sorry Chris, but your scores have never challenged my own– and I’m going to die without ever seeing Katsuki in real life-_

Wait.

Katsuki’s score means that he’d have to go for Worlds this year, if only because the ISU likes to have their best skaters in their major competitions. It's too late for him to go into the Grand Prix, though, because the assignments and first few qualifiers are all over.

 _Victor_ is going to Worlds this year. 

He writes another message to Phichit.

 **v-nikiforov**  
Is Yuuri Katsuki going to Worlds this year?

This time, the reply is instant.

 **phichit+chu**  
Sorry, just finished the first half of today’s practice. He wasn’t originally planning on it but I think he might have to. You might see him at the GPF in Sochi, too, if I do well enough on this second GP qualifier! If I make it, he’s promised to come watch me!

 **v-nikiforov**  
Oh, good luck!

 **phichit+chu**  
Thanks!

Victor knows what to look forward to now. For the first time in years, a feeling grows in the pit of his stomach for the Grand Prix Final– anticipation? Anxiety? Victor can no longer identify it, but it’s an exciting feeling.

...

 **kayla.skates**  
[image: a sketchbook page, a message and a signature in the bottom corner in a careful hand. A box has been drawn around the autograph. The rest of the page has been filled by a sketch of a skater, dark haired, in the middle of a step sequence.]

 **kayla.skates** I got an autograph from #yuurikatsuki! He’s so sweet– skates at the same rink as me, but in a different division so I don’t see him much. He didn’t use the whole page so I drew him! Go follow **@phichit+chu** , who posts all the Yuuri content!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no plan for these chapters, they're writing themselves. I'm just updating while I ride the wave of creativity– they'll peter off and then I'll update once in a blue moon lol
> 
> In the meantime, enjoy the chapters that have possessed my mortal frame to put themselves on the internet!


	4. An Interlude for Dancing

Derek gets to the rink a bit earlier than the rest of the hockey team, watching the figure skaters glide around in circles as they cool down. Specifically, he watches the cute guy from his calculus class, Phichit. Derek doesn’t think he’s ever seen him without perfect winged eyeliner. Currently, he’s gliding around, talking animatedly to an Asian man that Derek vaguely recognizes as his roommate.

They get off the ice, and Derek hears Phichit whine, “Come on, Yuuri! We haven’t been out to celebrate yet! Your project is done, you don’t have class tomorrow, it’s the perfect time!”

“No, Phichit, I don’t want to go to some random bar to get wasted.”

“It’ll be fun! Or, there’s probably a party somewhere, we could find one!”

A snort from the dark haired roommate. Derek realizes that he’s actually quite cute, big brown eyes behind large glasses, perched on a small nose. Not as pretty as Phichit, though.

“Who’d be partying at this time of year?” Roommate Yuuri asks.

“Actually, the hockey team is going out for dinner and drinks after this, you could tag along. We’d love a chance to celebrate… well… anything, really. We’re not picky.” Derek interjects, smiling winningly. 

Phichit looks at him and smiles, his teeth white against cinnamon skin. “That’d be fun! Yuuri, we should go!”

Yuuri frowns a little. “Sorry, who are you?” He speaks with a slight Japanese accent, really only noticeable on the rhotic sounds.

Derek sticks out his hand. “Derek. I’m from Phichit’s calculus class. You’re Yuuri?”

Yuuri shakes his hand, nodding. He doesn’t quite make eye contact.

“Awesome!” Phichit cheers. “We’ll come by after your practice is over, alright Derek?”

“Sure!”

“Sweet! Yuuri, come. I’m gonna dress you up tonight!”

“Please don’t.” Roommate Yuuri groans.

Derek laughs. “It’s not going to be anything formal, we’re going to a family restaurant for food and a club for drinks. Don’t even worry about it.”

Phichit grins. “Well, we’ll only dress up a little, then.”

Derek smiles back. They leave as the rest of the team arrives, and Derek takes a moment to appreciate how Phichit’s butt looks in his workout clothes.

…

Derek is not prepared for this. He’d changed out of his hockey gear into a button-down shirt and some jeans, as most of the other players had, and walked out into the lobby to be met with literal angels.

He feels one of his teammates crash into his back, but he can’t tear his eyes away. 

Phichit is leaning against one of the walls of the lobby, flicking through his phone. His eyeliner is as sharp as ever, accented with gold that stands out beautifully against his skin. His skinny jeans cling to every strong muscle of his legs, and Derek traces the lines of his abs through his mesh shirt until the view is blocked by a cropped jacket.

His roommate is there too, hair styled back. He’s also wearing jeans, and an overlarge tee. That shirt, paired with his glasses, makes him look too young to be drinking.

“Derek!” Phichit calls, waving. Derek feels a shove from behind, and stumbles forward.

“You,” Derek begins, speaking around a lump in his throat, “you look- I mean, you guys look great!”

Phichit laughs. “Thanks!” Roommate Yuuri blushes, looking down.

…

The dinner itself is loud and rowdy, as could be expected with hockey players. The restaurant is owned by the friends of one of the players, so the addition of two seats to the table is no trouble at all.

Derek discovers that, despite his appearance, Roommate Yuuri is actually three years older than Phichit. The reason they’re celebrating, according to Roommate Yuuri, is because he’d won a medal at a “small competition in Canada.” Phichit gives him A Look at that, but doesn’t press the issue.

Roommate Yuuri eats delicately, in small bites. Phichit leans over and quietly explains that it’s mostly because he’s not used to American food, and that he doesn’t want to ruin the strict diet that figure skaters follow.

Phichit doesn’t seem to care about that, though. Despite the fact that he eats mostly vegetables (“As per the rules, Derek!”), he has no problem eating copious amounts of it.

The bill is split and the whole group walks the block to the bar. Beers get passed around, and everyone’s already spirited mood begins to build.

“No thanks, I don’t really drink alcohol.” Roommate Yuuri declines the drink that is set in front of him.

“I’ll take it then!” Phichit calls, lunging for the glass. Yuuri picks up the beer and holds it away from Phichit, restraining him with just one hand.

“No. You’re still underage, Phichit.”

Derek sips at his own drink, having turned twenty-one hardly a month earlier.

“I’m basically legal in my home country!” Phichit whines at Yuuri, flailing his arms at the beer. “Drinking age is twenty in Thailand!”

Roommate Yuuri raises an eyebrow. “Are we in Thailand, Phichit?”

Derek nearly chokes as Phichit pouts. His full lower lip, glossy in the neon light, seems incredibly inviting. Derek drains his cup.

“No, but if you’re not going to be celebrating, I have to do it for you!”

Roommate Yuuri sighs and lowers the beer. Phichit grabs for it, but before his fingers can touch it, Yuuri snatches it and, in one smooth motion, downs the whole cup.

Someone on the team whistles. “Damn.”

Derek discreetly untucks his shirt so it hangs over his lap when Phichit turns large, watery eyes on Yuuri.

“That was mean, Yuuri.”

Yuuri smiles at him. “I’m not letting you make irresponsible decisions.”

“Then you go and make those irresponsible decisions so that I don’t have to.”

Across the table, someone starts a chant of _shots, shots, shots_. Someone brings a row of shot glasses and a bottle of liquor to the table.

Phichit reaches for one and sets it in front of Yuuri. He looks vaguely put upon, but when it’s his turn, he takes the shot.

…

Derek is one hundred percent drunk. He grips the edge of the table blearily, laughter ringing in his ears. Roommate Yuuri is strutting around, having stolen a pair of stiletto heels from a giggling girl two tables over. Despite having drunk easily as much as the rest of the team, he’s steady on his feet, though his cheeks are flushed red.

Phichit is still mostly sober, only having had a single drink in the time it took for Yuuri to get the shoes. He’s got his phone out, recording Yuuri and laughing.

Derek could die happy if it were Phichit’s laugh that he died to, he thinks.

The next thing he knows, Yuuri had started to dance, a cup of whiskey materializing in his hand. Despite leaping and spinning and dropping in perfect time to the pulsing beat of the music, not a single drop spills out of his cup.

“Phichit!” He calls, an easy smile on his lips. “Hold my glasses!”

And Roommate Yuuri takes off his glasses, sauntering over to Phichit to tuck them into the collar of his mesh shirt. “Guard them well,” he says solemnly.

Phichit grins. “Sir, yes sir.” He salutes with one hand, the other still holding his phone.

Faintly, Derek thinks that maybe he’s been pining over the wrong roommate. Yuuri with glasses and Yuuri without glasses is the difference between someone you want to hug and protect and someone you’d like to take you to bed.

Without the large glasses, the oversize shirt goes from cute to provocative, one shoulder slipping to reveal collarbones. The heels just make his legs seem longer, disappearing into the hem of the shirt.

Yuuri drains his cup, slams it on the table, then plants his hands on the table and kicks up, balancing on just one hand above his drinks in some breakdancing pose. 

That damnable shirt slips down, pooling under his arms, to reveal strong abdominal muscles and a perfectly round bottom, filling out his jeans obscenely.

Yuuri hops off the table, the drinks not even shaking, then saunters away onto the dance floor. His hips sway, framed by the shirt that has settled around his waist instead of halfway down his thighs as it was before.

Derek needs another drink.

“Get it Yuuri!” Phichit hollers, phone still pointed at Yuuri.

“I’m not quite drunk enough for that!” Yuuri calls back, flashing a smile over his shoulder.

Yup. He definitely needs another drink. Derek shudders and slides down in his seat, turning away from the scene on the dance floor.

Roommate Phichit pats him on the shoulder. “The Yuuri Katsuki effect.” He says sympathetically.

Derek doesn’t remember anything else about that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short one this time– bc let's face it, everyone had a platonic-crush on Phichit, and wanted to be his friend. 
> 
> next time: a two-shot involving the meeting of our oblivious anxious boy and the man who is _the_ definition of a hot mess.
> 
> also, this story grew a plot all on its own???? i'm pre-writing these chapters, and I can literally see a conclusion hurtling towards me. I'm powerless to stop it. There will probably be 10ish chapters, unless people start requesting stuff that i wanna write.
> 
> also also, i need a better summary. someone who is good at these things help me write one?


	5. In Which Yuuri Katsuki is Clark Kent

Yuuri skates his final Challenger series event with the expected aplomb. There aren’t assignments to these events, so he shows up to a practically empty rink and eases through his short program. He’s in second when the short programs end, and people have realized who’s skating second-to-last for the skate tomorrow.

Meaning, there are cameras pointed at him and three times as many people in the stands at his free skate performance, for which he skates his original, unaltered routine at a passable level. He can almost ignore the eyes on him, but the glides don’t come as easily, the jumps not as smoothly, the story not as freely. 

He doesn’t fall, but he doesn’t do as well as he had in Canada. He ends up with a silver, a fraction of a point away from bronze and a handful from gold, and he’s alright with that.

…

**austriasbae**  
Okay so I went to see #yuurikatsuki’s free skate, and got a video of it, and it looks completely different??? I’ve posted the video on YouTube, someone do a side-by-side.

> **viknikownsme**  
>  I gotchu\- for what it's worth, the timing is exactly perfect– literally frame-by-frame for audio to movement. Idk what happened to the actual skate but this dude knows his music.
>
>> **iceicebabyy**  
>  The jumps?? Are completely different??? Why’d he scale it down?
>> 
>> **firetigermelon3**  
>  Never mind the jumps, what happened to the artistry from before? Was it a fluke?
>> 
>> **has3tsuskate**  
>  Maybe he was just having an off day!
>> 
>> **CowalskyAnalysis**  
>  There’s off days and then there's looking like a whole ‘nother person. 

**rogers,gol.d**  
Shoutout to **@austriasbae** and **@viknikownsme** for these vids– here’s proof that it’s still the same guy. Steps and spins are still the same– jumps and transitions took a sharp decline in quality.  
[gif: side-by-side of one of Yuuri’s FS jumps- ISU shows a quad, new video shows a triple]  
[gif: side-by-side of FS jump- ISU combination, new has just a single jump]  
[gif: side-by-side of FS step sequence, one from the ISU video and one from the new video. They are identical.]  
[gif: side-by-side of FS spin from ISU and new. They look like the same video from different angles and different lighting.]

> **angelicA** clearly, a simple case of performance enhancing drugs. I just don’t know why he would bother for such a small skate, and why the ISU isn’t looking further into it. It’s because he’s just a mediocre skater usually– THIS SHOULD BE A DOPING SCANDAL.
> 
> **leifgreen @angelicA** literally no??? Doping doesn’t do anything for PCS, it only helps with strength and stamina and jumps and stuff. Regardless of how he skates, Katsuki has never had a problem with stamina.
> 
> **1225babie @leifgreen** that’s what she said

…

Yuuri watches Phichit’s final qualifying free skate with bated breath, breathless with anticipation. He cheers out when the score is announced, to the consternation of his neighbors. Yuuri keeps an eye on the time zones and calls Phichit when it is evening for him.

Phichit picks up, eyes bright with champagne and excitement. 

“I’m going to the Grand Prix final!”

Yuuri claps. “Good job, Phichit! I knew you could do it!”

“That means you’re coming to Sochi with me, right?”

“I guess I am.” Yuuri says in a deadpan, pulling an exaggeratedly sour face.

Phichit grins, flopping backwards onto the hotel bed. “Maybe you’ll finally talk to Victor Nikiforov, eh?”

Yuuri blushes. “Honestly, knowing I’m in the same _building_ as Victor Nikiforov is already better than what I could hope for.”

Something in Phichit’s eyes twinkles. “I’ll take you to the banquet– you’ll be in the same _room_ as Victor Nikiforov.”

“Phichit! Don’t even joke about that!”

“No, Yuuri, I’m serious! You’ll be my plus-one for the banquet! I’m gonna get you wasted!”

Yuuri snorts. “On what? Champagne?”

“Never underestimate a Chulanont.”

Considering the amount of hard liquor it took to get Yuuri blackout drunk, Yuuri wishes Phichit luck with the champagne.

“Alright, whatever you say, Phichit. I’ll let you go now, you look buzzed and you have your exhibition skate tomorrow.”

Phichit blew a kiss to his camera. “Goodnight Yuuri!”

“Goodnight, Phichit.”

…

Cristophe Giacometti stands in the lobby of the hotel in Sochi, squinting at the foreign characters– just close enough to the latin alphabet to look familiar, just foreign enough to be unintelligible.

“Need help, Chris?”

He turns, a wide smile on his lips. He’d recognize that Russian accent anywhere.

“Victor, my friend! How are you?”

There’s an unfamiliar spark in those blue-green eyes, and the smile he gives him holds far more feeling than what he normally gives the press.

“I’m doing wonderfully, Chris! I watched your skate in China– absolutely phenomenal, it really was.”

“Oh, Victor, you flatter me.” Chris flutters his eyelashes at Victor, every movement overdramatic. It takes Victor but a few heartbeats to start laughing uncontrollably.

Christophe pulls Victor into a hug, which is eagerly returned. 

Just then, something brushes against Chris’s calf, and he relinquishes Victor to turn and look. It’s someone’s carry-on luggage, being towed by an attractive man with the most perfect winged eyeliner. _It’s not fair for someone to look like that after they’ve clearly been traveling for hours,_ Chris grumbles.

“Oh, sorry!” the man says, “We’ve been on a plane for, like, twenty-something hours and I’m really not paying attention to anything.” He speaks with a nearly flawless American accent, tinged with a slight Southeast Asian twang. It softens the sounds delightfully.

“It’s no trouble at all, uh...”

“Phichit.” He says, smiling at Chris. Phichit… Oh! The Thai skater for tomorrow! Chris had watched one of his qualifying skates– he always pays attention to his competitors– and he was incredibly charismatic and energetic, the kind of skater that feels like he could melt the ice with nothing but the warmth of his personality.

Then, the illusion of energy is shattered when he yawns delicately. “Terribly sorry, but I have to put this in my room. My friend here has practically fallen asleep standing.” He tilts his head to a dark haired boy with large glasses, practically engulfed in a giant hoodie. Chris hadn’t even noticed him.

“I’ll see you at the public practice tomorrow?” Chris asks.

“Of course.” And with that, the pair stumble off, getting stopped by a large Italian man that Chris recognizes as Celestino Cialdini. They grab a room key and disappear into the elevator.

Chris turns around, and is met with a stock-still Victor. He waves his hand in front of Victor’s face, and there is no reaction.

“Not used to being overlooked, huh? Welcome to the life of us humans, Victor.” Chris jokes, jabbing an elbow into his side.

Victor is staring at the space where the two travelers had just been standing, a slight frown tugging at his lips and between his brows.

“That was… Phichit Chulanont, right?”

Chris snorts. “He’s _only_ one of the finalists for one of the biggest competitions in skating, Victor. Honestly, just because nobody stands a chance against you does mean you shouldn’t pay attention to them.”

Victor’s frown deepens, a furrow forming on his brow. “I need to talk to him.” He takes an aborted step towards the elevators. Chris grabs his arm.

“Did you see how tired he was? He didn’t even notice you. Let the poor boy rest.” _Honestly_ , Chris thinks. _Victor lives in his own special world sometimes, where the requirements of us mortal men don’t exist._

Victor holds his gaze for a minute, turquoise-blue and forest-green, then drops it. 

Chris puts the matter out of his mind. Hopefully, when Phichit is more coherent, he can have a proper conversation with him. For now, though…

“Show me the sights of your mother country, Victor! I showed you Paris, you show me Sochi!”

“You’re not from Paris, and I’m not from Sochi.”

“My point still stands!”

“You’re not even French, Chris.”  
…

Yuri Plisetsky sits in the stands, grumbling, as a last-minute practice begins. He knows he’s going to dominate the Junior division, so now he’s sitting in the stands for the Senior practice, scoping out his competition for next year. 

Victor is on the ice right now, showing off. Yuuri pulls his leopard-print hood lower so it obscures more of his face. He doesn’t want to see Victor, he sees plenty of him already in St. Petersburg.

None of the skaters are really standing out; there aren’t any particularly impressive jumps or spins. 

“This is a waste of time,” Yuri mutters under his breath. “Everyone’s jumps suck. No one’s even _trying_ to do their quads.”

Three rows ahead of him, a man in an enormous grey hoodie turns around, a frown on his face. Yuri makes eye contact, and sees the precise moment when recognition floods his features.

He doesn’t say anything, just turns back around and shouts encouragement to one of the skaters– the one with dark skin and a lot of energy.

Yuri speaks a little louder. “They all need to work on their jumps, they’re never gonna win if they think they can compete with wimpy triples.”

Hoodie boy turns around again, blue-rimmed glasses flashing. His lips press together, as if he’s holding in an opinion.

Yuri raises a thin blond eyebrow at him. “You have a problem with that?”

The man takes a shuddering breath, then turns back around without saying a word. 

Yuri hops down and grabs his shoulder. “Oi, I’m talking to you!”

He turns around fully and faces Yuri. He takes a deep breath and wets his lips, then says softly, “I just think that jumps aren’t all that figure skating is. There’s a reason why technical skill is only a portion of the score.” His English is actually quite good, the consonants just a little too soft and the “r” sound just a little off.

Yuri glares at the man. “Is that what they teach you in reject school, piggy?” He eyes the hoodie, which has _got_ to be concealing pudge. The rink isn’t nearly cold enough to warrant it otherwise.

The man looks hurt, and turns away, looking at the rink again. His voice stays the same quiet, non-confrontational tone. “I don’t presume to know better– I didn’t qualify for this event, after all– but there are a lot of programs that win without quads.”

Yuri snorts, but lets the matter go. Clearly, this guy is a wannabe skater who hasn’t done anything with his life, and he’s not worth the time. He settles back in, pulling out his phone and opening his saved videos. He’d learn more watching the Imposter Yuuri than this group of amateurs, anyways.

…

“You ready for the short program this afternoon?” asks Yuuri as soon as Phichit gets off the ice.

“Feeling good about it!” Phichit affirms, slipping on his skate guards to walk to the prep room, where he’s left his jacket and street shoes.

They step out of the rink, and Phichit shivers, rubbing his arms through his long-sleeved practice shirt.

“The Russians keep it _so cold_ , and it’s even worse outside!” He complains. Yuuri laughs.

“Tell me about it,” he says ruefully. “And I don’t think they even notice!”

In front of them walk a couple of female skaters that Yuuri recognizes from ~~stalking~~ observing Victor. One of them is from France, and she’s wearing leggings and a long-sleeved shirt, like Phichit is. The other is one of Victor Nikiforov’s rinkmates, Mila Babicheva, and she’s in a loose cropped tank top. 

Phichit and Yuuri share a look.

“Russians?”

“Russians.”

Yuuri puts his hands in his sweater pocket, and his stomach drops. “Phichit, I think I left my phone on the bleachers. I’ll catch up to you, I just need to go and-”

He turns and collides with someone, who catches his arms and holds him upright.

“Sorry, sorry!” Yuuri says, immediately flushing red. He keeps his gaze down on the ground. “I didn’t mean to run into you, I just-”

He’s cut off by a laugh. “Don’t worry about it!” And a torrent of ice races down his spine. He recognizes that voice. He’s heard that accent in a thousand interviews.

Slowly, he lifts his gaze to see a face that he’s seen a million times before, on the glossy covers of magazines, on the television coverage of every major figure skating event, on the carefully airbrushed posters on his walls.

He looks up and sees the smiling face of Victor Nikiforov.

There’s only one thing to do in this situation.

Yuuri yelps, turns entirely red, and runs away.

…

Victor steps off the ice to let the next group have their practice time. He waves at some girls in the bleachers, who start screaming. 

He follows a line of skaters out the rink doors, and sees Phichit Chulanont up ahead, talking with someone with dark hair in a frankly ridiculously large hoodie.

Surely it wasn’t cold enough to justify that?

Nevertheless, Victor lengthens his strides, trying to get closer to Phichit. He wants to ask him if Yuuri Katsuki is at this competition– he hasn’t seen him yet, perhaps he’s out sightseeing?

He’s only a few paces away from the pair when the one in the hoodie seems to realize something. He says something quickly to Phichit, then whirls around too quickly for Victor to react.

He collides with Victor’s chest, who quickly grabs the man’s arms to keep him from falling over.

The man in the hoodie scrambles backward into a bow, apologizing profusely. He’s rather cute, the hoodie swallowing him and making him look soft and very huggable. His face, too, is round and soft, helped along by the big blue glasses. He looks young– maybe an older Junior skater? Young and incredibly adorable.

Victor can’t help but laugh. “Don’t worry about it!” he interrupts the boy’s frantic apologies.

Then, the boy does something curious. He looks at Victor, turns bright red, squeaks unintelligibly, and darts away, back towards the rink. He’s remarkably fast.

“Don’t mind my friend.” Phichit had turned around, a smirk on his lips and mirth in his eyes. “He’s a big fan, and gets flustered easily.”

Victor waves it off. “Don’t even mention it, that’s perfectly understandable.”

Phichit hums, an air of mischief around him.

“So,” Victor begins, suddenly nervous for no good reason at all. “Congratulations on making it to the Grand Prix Final.”

“Thank you!” Phichit says cheerfully.

“So, you’d mentioned that your friend would be here if you made it?”

“Which friend?” Phichit asks innocently.

“Uh… Yuuri Katsuki? The one you post about a lot? You know, the one that broke my record for the free-”

Phichit interrupts him before Victor can make a fool of himself. “Yes, yes, I’m just teasing. He’s around here somewhere,” he says, laughing.

“Ah. Cool.” Victor isn’t quite sure how to proceed from here.

Luckily, Phichit seems willing to indulge him in conversation. “Speaking of cool, how are you not cold?” He eyes Victor’s t-shirt with mild distrust.

Victor laughs. And laughs. And laughs. They’re in the prep room before he can collect himself enough to answer. 

“I’m Russian! Cold is just a thing that happens to other people!”

Phichit frowns. “It’s December.”

“Practically balmy!”

Phichit shakes his head mournfully. “It’s never this cold in Thailand.”

Victor keeps laughing. “If it’s any consolation, the rink is warmer than the outside air.”

Phichit’s frown deepens to a scowl. 

“I know.”

…

Yuuri waits for Phichit outside of the kiss and cry. He cheers when the scores are announced, the final score landing Phichit in second with two skaters– Chris Giacometti and Victor Nikiforov– left to skate.

He wraps Phichit in a fierce hug as soon as he could– fourth in the first Grand Prix final he’d ever been in was absolutely amazing! There’s no doubt that gold and silver would be taken by Victor and Chris– even after the short program, they were ahead by more than just a handful of points. Phichit is grinning, clearly satisfied with his performance.

“Congratulations!” Yuuri exclaims, hugging Phichit tighter.

Phichit wheezes, but doesn’t let go of Yuuri. “Thanks,” he mumbles into the shoulder of his hoodie. 

He pulls away, and says, “I am _this_ close to crying, but I refuse to mess up my eyeliner,” holding out one hand with this thumb and index finger nearly touching.

Yuuri laughs. “Valid!”

They watch the final skates, and Yuuri thinks that Chris’s program this year– and every year, really– needs to come with a parental advisory warning. And of course, Victor Nikiforov’s program is everything he didn’t know he needed– life and love and longing and loss. Yuuri already knows that he’ll end up learning that routine in his spare time, and probably skate it on the nights when he’s alone and longing for home.

Phichit doesn’t make it to the podium, but hangs around for photos and interviews. Yuuri excuses himself and goes back to their room.

In the elevator, he begins to fret about the banquet. Phichit could undoubtedly help him do his makeup, but his hair would practically be a lost cause. _Victor Nikiforov_ would be there– Yuuri had to make a good impression on him, if only for the three seconds that he would see him when he asks for an autograph.

The hall is empty as he walks towards the room that he and Phichit are sharing. 

The silence is broken by his phone’s ringtone, which goes off almost as soon as he opens his door.

“Hello?”

“Yuuri? It’s Mari.”

“Nee-chan? What’s up?”

“Yuuri, I’m so sorry, but Vicchan… he…”

“What? Nee-chan, what’s going on?”

“I’m so sorry Yuuri.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry.
> 
> could i have posted the 6k+ word chapter as one thing instead of two? yes. would it be nearly as dramatic? no.


	6. Interlude Part Two: Electric Boogaloo

Phichit walks into the hotel room, buoyed up by his own success. The banquet is in just a few hours– he’s got to get himself and Yuuri ready for that!

Speaking of Yuuri, he’d gone up to the room hours ago, but the lights are all off. Phichit flicks them on, and is greeted with the sight of Yuuri curled up in a ball against the headboard of his bed, staring morosely at his phone. His eyes and nose are red, and he’s pulled the hoodie over his legs as if it could envelop him completely.

Phichit’s joviality evaporates, and he rushes over to Yuuri. He holds his arms out, and Yuuri leans into him, trembling. He does not cry, though Phichit thinks this is more because he simply has no tears left.

“Yuuri, what’s happened?”

“Vicchan, he-” Yuuri stops, his voice raspy from crying. He takes a deep, fortifying breath, then says, “My sister called. Vicchan’s gone.”

Phichit feels his heart break for Yuuri. He hasn’t seen his dog in person for years, but at least once a week, Phichit has watched him video-call Vicchan and tell him (and by extension, his mother) about his week. Yuuri loved his toy poodle, possibly more than anything else in the world.

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” Phichit hugs him closer. “Do you want me to stay here with you?”

Yuuri shakes his head. “No, the banquet is tonight, you should go. You did amazing, especially for your first go at it. You should celebrate.”

Phichit frowns. “I’m not gonna leave you alone to go party, Yuuri.”

Yuuri laughs wetly. “It’ll be fine, just leave me with a bottle of tequila or something.”

“I’ll be back, then.” Phichit says thoughtfully. 

“Wait, no, I wasn’t serious about that–”

“Isn’t that what people do, though? Drink their sorrows away?”

Yuuri hesitates, and Phichit can see the grief in his eyes. 

“I’ll drink with you. We’ll toast it to Vicchan, okay?”

“Okay,” Yuuri whispers. “To Vicchan.”

…

Phichit couldn’t find tequila, but he did find vodka. Apparently, he looks too young to be able to buy it, so he tells Celestino the situation, who then helps him buy the bottle.

“ _You_ can’t drink too much, though, Chulanont. It’s not your dog, and we have to get on a plane tomorrow.” Celestino fixes Phichit with a serious look.

As an afterthought, he adds, “And I’m somewhat sure the drinking age for hard liquor is twenty-one.”

Phichit laughs hollowly. “I’ll be fine! We’re in Russia! And isn’t the drinking age in Italy, like, sixteen?”

Celestino waves him off. “Just tell Yuuri that I’m sorry for his loss, alright?”

Phichit’s mood plummets. “Yes, coach. I will.”

…

In the end, Phichit only gets a couple shots of vodka. They toast to Vicchan for the first, and the second is taken in silence. Phichit tries to pour them both a third shot, but Yuuri grabs the bottle and takes a swig out of it.

“Don’t get too drunk, Phichit. You’re still going to the banquet. You can have more after you get ready.”

Even grieving and with the promise of hard liquor, Yuuri is still the responsible one. 

“Alright, Yuuri. Go slow on that vodka, alright? It’s strong.”

“I know.” Pointedly, Yuuri pours another shot. “Go get ready.”

Phichit puts on his suit and reapplies his makeup. When he comes back out, the bottle is emptier.

Yuuri’s eyes have begun to glaze over. Phichit feels mildly impressed that he’s still coherent.

Phichit worries at the inside of his cheeks, thinking. On the one hand, he could leave Yuuri here to wallow in his own grief, drink himself into a stupor, and then fall asleep. On the other hand, he could take Yuuri to the banquet, and maybe get him to do something that can help him forget his grief.

In the end, it was no choice at all.

“Yuuri, even if you’re not coming down with me, do you want me to do your makeup?”

Yuuri turns half-lidded eyes on Phichit. “Why?”

“It might make you feel better,” he says, shrugging.

Yuuri considers it for a moment, then shrugs and stands up, leaving the shot glasses and the bottle on the nightstand. He’s remarkably steady on his feet as he walks into the restroom, where he sits on the toilet seat as Phichit lines his eyes and highlights his face.

“How about you change into your suit, too?”

At this point, Yuuri’s looking less like he’s falling into an abyss. He nods, and Phichit pulls his suit out of his suitcase and hands it to him. 

He emerges looking almost sober, the suit sitting sharply on his figure. _It’d be a damn shame if no one else got to see this,_ Phichit thinks. The blazer is a bit big, sitting just right on his shoulders but loose everywhere else, but the shirt and the pants fit nicely, following the long lines of his torso and legs. He looks _good_.

Except for that tie. It’s the wrong shade of blue to match his glasses, and just not light or dark enough to be a statement color. It’s just… not a good fashion choice.

Sadly, Phichit doesn’t have a spare tie, so it will have to do. He knots it for Yuuri, a perfect double Windsor, to try and salvage the color. It’s not too terribly bad once he’s done with it.

“Take a picture of me before I leave for the banquet?” he requests, handing his phone to Yuuri.

“Okay.” Yuuri says, taking the phone and walking backwards to find a good angle. 

He ends up right next to the nightstand before he takes the picture.

Phichit takes the phone from him, then grabs the vodka and presses it into his hand. 

“Well, then, I’m off.” Phichit says, lingering by the beds. “Will you be okay here by yourself?”

Yuuri looks at the bottle in his hand, still three-quarters full, then at Phichit. He takes a swig from it, then grabs the cork off the table. He corks the bottle, and tucks the whole thing into his blazer somewhere.

“I’ll come with you.”

…

Victor gets to the banquet a few minutes early, and there’s no sign of Yuuri Katsuki. Phichit isn’t here either, which means they’re probably still getting ready. Victor retrieves a glass of champagne and goes to talk to the people who give him money for doing what he does. 

Sponsors and champagne and gold-diggers. This is why banquets are so terribly dull.

By the time Phichit walks in, Victor is on his fourth flute of champagne. He’s followed by his bespectacled friend from practice, the one that bumped into Victor.

That friend seems oddly familiar– out of that massive sweater, his figure is surprisingly trim, and his jaw is stronger than he thought it was.

Phichit is immediately swept up by the storm of sponsors, but he makes a point of handing his friend a flute of champagne.

The friend seems oddly somber for a banquet, especially considering that he’s meant to be a fan of the sport.

Chris sidles up next to Victor.

“Whatcha looking at?” he asks, slinging a casual arm around Victor’s shoulders. He follows his gaze to the dark-haired man, who is currently nursing the flute of champagne in the corner of the room.

They watch as he sips at it, pulls a face at the taste, then downs the whole thing like water.

Victor whistles. “He looks like he’s had a rough day, doesn’t he?” He can feel Chris nodding against his shoulder.

He gets pulled away by another sponsor, and doesn’t see Phichit’s friend until much later in the night. He’s holding what looks to be water in a champagne flute, surrounded by a veritable forest of empty glasses. 

Speaking of Phichit, the Thai skater comes up next to Victor, looking in the same direction. “Hello Victor! Enjoying the banquet?”

“Same old, same old.” Victor hesitates, then nods at the bespectacled man in the corner. “Your friend looks like he’s having a rough time.”

Phichit smiles ruefully. “He got tired of champagne.”

Victor looks down at the single flute, half-empty, in Phichit’s hand. Victor thinks it's the same one as the one he’d grabbed at the beginning of the night.

“I hesitate to ask, but what’s in his glass then?”

Phichit hesitates, then offers, “Vodka, probably.”

Victor is more than a little alarmed. “Where is he getting vodka?”

Phichit points towards his friend, who had finished his flute of vodka and _pulled a bottle out from underneath his blazer to pour himself another._

“That can’t be good for him.” Victor hears himself say, faintly.

Phichit winces. “It really isn’t. I’d better go stop him.”

Victor watches as Phichit wades through the champagne glasses towards his friend, who grins at him with the enthusiasm of the very drunk. He gently eases the vodka bottle from his friend’s hand, then has him come off the wall. Although he must be marvelously drunk, the friend seemingly has no issues weaving through the glasses littering the floor.

Phichit leads his friend back over to Victor, who is now able to see that the man is rather attractive. He was adorable in the sweater, but now in a disheveled suit, he looks like someone Victor wouldn’t say no to in a bar. 

“Phichit, you can have my glasses,” the friend declares. “Everything’s blurry anyways.” And those blue-rimmed glasses are unceremoniously taken off and shoved towards Phichit, who smiles indulgently and takes them.

Victor sucks in a breath. The friend runs a hand through his hair, pushing it off his forehead, and smiles. He looks very familiar, and there’s a soaring sensation in the bottom of his belly that he’d only ever associated with one other person-

“This is Victor Nikiforov, though you already knew that.” Phichit says, elbowing his friend lightly in the side. “Victor, meet my friend, Yuuri Katsuki. He’s not usually this drunk.”

Victor drains the rest of his champagne.

…

_Holy shit it’s Yuuri Katsuki! Why is he here? When did he get here? He didn’t compete today, that’s for damn sure. I watched all of the crappy-ass senior skaters._

And yet, somehow, Yuri Plisetsky finds himself trying desperately to copy what the older skater is doing, in a dance battle of embarrassing proportions.

As if to add insult to injury, when Katsuki had gotten far too close to Yuri to challenge him to a dance battle, Yuri had gotten a whiff of the alcohol on his breath.

And yet, as Yuri jumps over one of Katsuki’s swinging legs, there is no sign of the dizziness and disorientation that characterizes the movements of the very drunk. He is perfectly capable of spinning on his head, balancing on one hand, and jumping and flipping as though he were a professional breakdancer.

It’s really not fair, since Yuri knew that most people would hardly be able to walk straight with half as much alcohol in their system.

Begrudgingly, Yuri gives the Imposter Yuuri credit for his alcohol tolerance.

…

Chris can’t believe that he didn’t recognize Phichit’s friend until the glasses came off. But then, he challenged the current Junior Grand Prix Champion to a dance-off, mumbling-drunk, and _won._

The moment he saw that, he made eye contact with his friend on the staff, who nodded at him and disappeared, presumably to install the thing he’d asked for.

Strictly speaking, that friend on the staff was not doing it as a favour to Chris. This friend became his friend after a _demonstration._

It was probably the best decision of Chris’s life.

Phichit’s friend– _Yuuri Katsuki_ , the guy who _broke Victor’s record_ – had turned this high-end banquet into, essentially, a club party. And no club would be complete without the entertainment.

And Chris would be happy to provide.

“Phichit! Look! It’s a pole!” Chris hears, and he turns and sees that his friend on the staff had done what he had asked, and had installed a dancing pole off to the side of the room.

Chris walks over. “Would you like to dance?”

Phichit and Yuuri both look up, Phichit’s face breaking into a smile as Yuuri regards him with a squint.

There is a moment of slow recognition, then Yuuri brightens and says “Chris Giack- eh… Giacom-,” he concentrates, a furrow appearing in his forehead as he slowly sounds out the syllables, “Gi-a-com-et-ti!”

He beams at his own success, and it is bright enough that Chris has to look away. Without his glasses, he’s instantly recognizable, but he’s drunk and earnest enough to firmly put him on the “cute” side of the attractiveness spectrum. 

“It’s a pleasure to formally meet you, Yuuri Katsuki.” He extends one hand out to the man, who giggles and takes it. “May I have this dance?”

Yuuri smiles, shrugging off his blazer. His shoulders fill the cheap fabric of his shirt, and he points at the pole.

“Only if _that_ is the dance!”

Upon getting dragged to the pole, Chris begins to reassess his conclusion of where on the attractiveness spectrum this boy falls. As soon as Yuuri gets to the pole, he drops his pants and climbs on, showing a familiarity with the medium that is born from hours of practice, not liquid courage.

There is not a trace of that adorable earnestness in the fluid rolls of his body, nor the effortless support of his entire body weight on the pole.

Chris _has_ to dance with him. It’s not even a matter of competition, or the fact that Chris just really enjoys pole dancing. No, it’s an instinct, deep within, that Yuuri has dragged to the surface with just a single look from under half-lidded eyes.

There is deceptive strength under that white shirt of his, and Chris cannot wait to test it.

…

Victor can’t believe he didn’t recognize Yuuri Katsuki without his glasses. In his defense, they completely change the shape of his face.

But now that they’re off, Victor can’t believe that he didn’t see it before. Hindsight is 20/20, after all.

Speaking of good vision, Victor is so glad that he gets to watch the banquet unfold in high definition.

There’s a stripper pole in the banquet hall, and he has to blame Chris for it. There’s no one else with the influence or audacity to put one there. 

He might also have to thank Chris for it, because Yuuri Katsuki is currently spinning on the pole in nothing but his tie and his underwear.

His shoulders flex as he hauls himself up the pole, the strength of his core obvious. 

Victor arranges his suit jacket so that it falls across his lap, but does not tear his eyes away.

And then, _and then_ , Chris, in a similar state of undress, crawls up the pole onto Yuuri.

And Yuuri is supporting the entire weight of himself and another grown man with nothing but his arms.

Victor feels faint.

The way his biceps bulge when Chris shifts his weight, how he’s able to hold them both entirely parallel to the ground… It’s something out of Victor’s wildest fantasies, the ones that he’d locked away long ago, after he grew out of his boyhood petiteness.

But then the way they _move_ , good lord, it's something from a video from the dark web, too inhumanly beautiful for mortal eyes to deserve.

Victor pulls out his phone and starts taking pictures. Later, when he looks at them, they won’t capture the raw energy of this moment in time, but they’ll serve as a reminder of when Victor was within arms’ reach of the embodiment of desire.

Someone hands Yuuri a bottle of champagne, and he pulls the cork off with his teeth and takes a swig, pouring the rest over himself and Chris.

Victor wants to lick it off.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. Yuuri gets off the pole, and Chris begins his own solo performance, to the cheers of the gathered crowd. Phichit pulls a white shirt over Yuuri and has him sit down, handing him some water. There is still champagne on his skin, so the fabric sticks to him, becoming sheer in places.

Victor can’t tear his eyes away, and before he realizes it, he’s walked over to the pair. Yuuri is drinking his water with the reluctance of a child, and Phichit is happily looking through the photographs.

Victor wonders if he’d be willing to send him some of those pictures.

Then, Yuuri spots Victor.

“Victor!” His voice is slurred, rounded with a heavy Japanese accent. “Dance with me!”

Phichit puts a hand on Yuuri’s shoulder. “No, finish your water first!”

Yuuri pouts, and Victor can _feel_ the impending cardiac arrest.

Eventually, Yuuri does finish his water, and bounds up and pulls Victor to the dance floor.

They end up doing a tango, the music flowing through Yuuri’s limbs as though he was the one who was playing it. It is all Victor can do to keep up– the only thing that saves him is two decades of musicality on the ice.

Victor stumbles over his feet and nearly falls on some of the fast spins, having had multiple glasses of champagne.

Yet, Yuuri, who has had an order of magnitude more ethanol tonight, has no problem whatsoever, dancing with the grace of a prima ballerina. There isn’t a single missed beat, a single stumbled spin, a hint of weakness in those arms when he dips Victor.

He’s a star in the empty wasteland that Victor has been wandering, inexorable gravity drawing him in until there is no option but to collide.

The music turns slow, and Yuuri doesn’t stumble. He pulls Victor close, looking up through his lashes at him. 

“I-” Victor begins hesitantly.

Yuuri puts a finger up to Victor’s lips, shushing him. He stands on his toes so that his mouth is right next to Victor’s ears.

“I want to tell you something,” he whispers, voice delightfully low and sending a shiver all the way down his spine. 

“Anything,” Victor promises. To what, he doesn’t know, but at this point, he could hardly care less.

“I’m tired.” And the man in his arms sags against his shoulder, body completely limp.

Bewildered, Victor pries him up, and sees that Yuuri had fallen asleep on his shoulder, breathing deep and even.

Despairingly, he looks at the angel in his arms, then around the room desperately. He makes eye contact with Phichit, who squints at his situation, then begins to laugh uproariously.

“What do I do?” He mouths. Phichit doesn’t respond, too busy snapping pictures and laughing.

In the end, Victor carries Yuuri over to Phichit, who hands Victor a keycard, still giggling.

He carries him up to Yuuri’s room, and settles him into one of the beds. Yuuri clings onto his neck with surprising force for someone who is asleep, and Victor prays to every god he can think of– every god that he does or doesn't believe in– for the strength to leave.

Eventually, Yuuri lets go and turns over, burrowing his way into his pillows. Victor’s heart aches, but he forces himself to look away. He leaves the keycard on the nightstand, then retreats from the room.

The click of the door behind him feels damning, and there’s a feeling in his chest and stomach that he can’t quite name.

He sits against Yuuri’s door for a while, until he can hear the elevator at the other end of the hall. He gets up and leaves in the other direction, turning the corner before whoever had come could see him.

He’d better see Yuuri at Worlds. 

He doesn’t know what he’d do if he doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3.2k of banquet shenanigans. I have never been blackout drunk, and none of this is behavior or feelings that i am familiar with. please drink responsibly.
> 
> Next time– no plot, but a short lil ballet bit while i figure out the situation with worlds. thanks for reading!!


	7. Small Towns Don't Have Ballet Schools

It’s the first day of class, and Leslie is _not_ pleased to have landed the TA job for the beginner’s class in ballet.

She doesn’t want to spend an hour and a half a week doing plies and demonstrating positions for college students who are only there for the GPA boost. Who even came up with the concept of offering a _graded_ dance class, anyways? For non-dance majors, even!

It’s ludicrous.

She’s supposed to have another TA, but they’ve not shown up. The name is something foreign, and Leslie resigns herself to having to teach ballet _and_ English.

As the students file in, she runs an appraising eye over them. 

Most of the girls, luckily, seem to at least be ready to learn something. All of them are in either leggings or shorts, and some have even tied their hair back properly.

There are three guys in this group– more than usual, honestly– and one of them is absolutely only there to ogle at the girls. He hasn’t bothered to wear dance pants, having come to class in sagging jeans and a leer.

One of the boys sees her, and makes a beeline for her. Leslie sighs, bracing herself to be hit on.

“Are you Leslie Lopez?” he asks, giving her a polite bow.

“I am, and you are?” she says coolly.

The man lights up, extending a hand. “I’m Yuuri Katsuki, the other TA!”

Leslie looks at him again. He speaks with English nearly flawlessly, with just a hint of an accent peeking through his words. Yuuri doesn’t look like a danseur, his form swallowed by loose clothing.

“Where’d you study?” Leslie asks, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

He blushes, and avoids eye contact. “I, uh, learned ballet from a local teacher. I’ve been dancing since I was little, though!” He says earnestly.

 _Great. Guess I’m the only real TA for this class then._ Leslie thinks sourly.

…

Yuuri’s actually not a bad dancer. He’s able to hold the poses for extended periods of time without shaking, and his movements are clean and graceful, for the most part.

He ends up repeating the basic demonstrations for the class, while Leslie does the actual dancing segments. Yuuri can do them, but he seems to curl in on himself more often than not. He’s not making amateur mistakes– the teacher would never allow it for a TA– but he’s not exceptional or anything. It’s small things– a flat foot here, an over-fast turn there, but they build up to paint the picture of a painfully average dancer.

Leslie thinks she knows why. Yuuri’s not a bad dancer, but he’s incapable of letting the movements flow. He’s flawless– as he should be– on the individual components and when it's the most basic of movements, but the longer dance segments showcase his weakness.

It’s such a shame, too. Leslie has always wanted to do a partner dance, but she refuses to do it with an amateur. It’s too close to audition season to risk getting dropped and injuring something.

She is brought out of her musing by the teacher’s voice.

“Alright, your next assignment is a choreography project! You will work with a group that I have assigned you to choreograph thirty seconds of a piece of your choice.”

The teacher reads off the names, then eyes her two TA’s. “You know what, your TA’s will do a project too. Just so you lot can see some of what can be done if you apply yourself.”

Yuuri looks like a deer in the headlights, eyes wide behind his glasses. Leslie thinks he should invest in contacts, if only so he doesn’t constantly look like a woodland creature.

The class breaks into their groups, with Leslie and Yuuri in a back corner.

Crossing her arms, Leslie asks, “You got any suggestions for the music?”

Yuuri shakes his head, fiddling with his fingers.

Sighing, Leslie retrieves her phone from her bag. “I’m working on a piece for my audition for a dance company, and we’re using this.” She plays it for him.

“You think you can handle it?” It’s a dynamic piece, slow violins overlaying faster piano– the kind of music you’d show off to.

To her surprise, Yuuri doesn’t seem bothered. “I can work with it. Do you have anything choreographed?”

Leslie decides to show him the two bars that she was sure about, and then sketched out the rest of the thirty seconds. Yuuri just nods.

“Give me until next class, and I will contribute something to your choreography.” He smiles, then, charmingly, “Though what you have already is very good.”

“Thanks.” She knows that.

They run through her choreography a few times before the class ends, and Leslie is pleasantly surprised to find that Yuuri picked it up after only a few times trying it. His movements are smoother, almost, now that the whole class isn’t watching him.

Leslie smiles, in a significantly better mood than before. “I’ll see you on Thursday then!”

Yuuri bows. “I will work on this project. See you Thursday!”

…

The problem with being a dancer is the sheer number of bags that you have to tote around. It was nearly eight in the evening before Leslie realized that she’d left her computer bag somewhere, and she had to retrace her steps to find it.

Hours later, she ends up in the dance building, walking towards the ballet room. At this time, there are only a few people left– scant lights show where people who either have competitions coming up or have favour with the director are practicing after-hours.

To her surprise, there is someone in the ballet room.

An unfamiliar song, operatic and full of flutes, is playing as she gets closer. It reaches its conclusion in the same moment that she looks through the window, and sees who is bothering to use the room so late in the day.

It’s Yuuri.

He holds the last pose of the piece for just a moment, then goes to his phone, connected to a pocket speaker near the mirrors. In the corner, against the mirror, there is a dark shape that Leslie recognizes as the computer bag she had been looking for.

Leslie reaches for the door handle, but she pauses when she recognizes the music that Yuuri begins to play.

It’s her music, the one that she’s trying to choreograph to.

Leslie puts her face back up to the window, and watches Yuuri breeze through the section that she’s choreographed as though he was born to.

Suddenly, the weird quirks he has when he dances makes sense. The turns that he takes too fast are because while everyone is doing double pirouettes, he wants to do three. The way he almost-stumbles on those steps is because he wants to put an extra hop and cross in between. There is no reason why he shouldn’t dance like this for the class– it's always good to give the students something to aspire to. 

Yuuri is more than just _good_ , Leslie realizes, as he keeps dancing past what she had choreographed. Leslie choreographs deliberately: she will do a move, then rewind until the whole section has been filled, move by move. Yuuri doesn’t.

He just dances, all the way through the piece, as if what pumps in his veins is not blood but music, as if his body is not the instrument but the cage to which the art must be confined.

The thirty seconds are over in a heartbeat, and Leslie opens the door.

Yuuri flinches out of the pose, clasping his hands in front of him and rounding his shoulders, broad underneath the big white shirt.

“Do that again,” Leslie demands.

Yuuri looks at her, molten chocolate eyes blown wide, glasses abandoned next to his speaker.

Eventually, he swallows and plays the music again.

The first time he does it, it looks different. Not overly so, but a little more hesitant, a little less confident. It’s still far better than what he demonstrates in class, but it has lost the otherworldly quality his dancing had a spare minute before.

But the way his arms arrange themselves, the sweeping movements of a kick, the placement of the pirouette– everything feels _right_ in a way that her choreography simply doesn’t.

He does it a few more times, and with each successive attempt, he regains the ease that he’d had before she walked in. Soon, he’s grinning at Leslie as he dances, and she feels like she’s the only person in the entire world.

Leslie takes off her shoes and dances with him in sweatpants and socks, and it is beautiful.

It's far too late by the time they finish, but Leslie almost doesn’t feel the exhaustion in her limbs, floating in the knowledge of a good piece of choreography.

“Thank you.” she says, utterly sincere for once.

Yuuri smiles, then, glowing with genuine happiness.

“It was my pleasure.”

Leslie uses Yuuri’s choreography for her audition.

She is accepted into the dance company.

The next time she sees him in class, she tackles him in a hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> really short one this time, bc the next one is a doozy. we'll get back to the plot shortly, but i'm just putting this out as the last independent one-shot that i have. 
> 
> the song that yuuri is dancing to at first when leslie catches him is Victor's short program, translated into dance. please be aware that the only real dance experience i have is three semesters in preschool and some mandatory school classes.
> 
> next time: yuuri is visited by a friend.


	8. An Audience of One

Yuuko Nishigori knew about Yuuri’s record-breaking skate the moment it happened. Unfortunately, she found out through her kids, who had piled into her bedroom at five in the morning, waving a tablet, yelling “Victor Nikiforov’s FS record was broken!”

As soon as she saw the official video, there was no doubt in her mind that it was her childhood friend, skating the way she always knew he was able to.

She was also perfectly aware of how much more anxious he would be now that there were _expectations_ put on him. 

And then she got the news about Vicchan, and she knew that Yuuri would have been a complete mess. He probably still is.

Which is why she is currently packing for a trip to America.

“ _Mom!_ Why can’t we go with you?” Her triplets chorus in unison. 

“We _care_ about skating! We should get to meet your world-record friend!” Lutz complains.

“Plus, we hardly know _anything_ about him!” Loop adds.

“And we can go see other skaters while you two catch up!” Axel concludes.

Yuuko shakes her head. “No, girls, I’m gonna be gone for as long as Yuuri needs me, and you three can’t miss school for that long. I’ll be back after the World Championships at the latest, and I’ll call you every day.”

The triplets pout, entirely unmollified.

Sighing, Yuuko offers, “I’ll ask Yuuri if he can get on a call with you at some point, okay?”

They brighten up, though Lutz looks unconvinced. “And you get a video of him practicing to send to us.” 

“Okay, I will.” Yuuko promises. “Take care of your dad for me, won’t you?”

…

 **Nishigori Yuuko**  
Pick me up from the Detroit airport in, like, 18 hours, ‘kay?

 **Katsuki Yuuri**  
What?? Yuuko, don’t fly to Detroit, you don’t have to do that! What about your husband? Your kids (that I haven’t seen since they were babies I’m so sorry about that)? How long are you staying? Do you even have a place to stay?

 **Katsuki Yuuri**  
You’ve turned your phone off already, haven’t you?

 **Katsuki Yuuri**  
Dammit Yuuko.

…

“Hey, coach, I’m gonna have to leave a bit early, is that alright?” Yuuri’s soft voice is hardly audible over the scraping of skates over ice. Ever since Sochi, he’d been quieter than usual.

Celestino waves a large hand, unconcerned. “I know you’re definitely getting enough hours, don’t worry about it. Go do what you have to.”

Yuuri bows, then gets off the ice and begins to take his skates off. 

Phichit skates to the edge of the rink, and calls out to him. “Where are you going? You’ve never ditched practice before!”

“One of my friends is coming from Japan, and she told me when she got on the plane. I have to go pick her up.”

Phichit teasingly wiggles his eyebrows. “A _friend_ , you say?”

He takes a special kind of schadenfreude in watching the red creep up his friend’s neck. “Not like that!” Yuuri insists, louder.

There’s nothing he can do but laugh. It’s nice to see a spark of life in Yuuri’s eyes. “Bring her over! Does she have a place to stay?”

Yuuri shrugs, tucking his skates into his bag. He waves at Phichit and Celestino, and leaves the rink.

“Phichit! Why is it that every time I look away from you, you’re slacking off?” Celestino’s voice thunders through the rink. Phichit can see a couple of their other rinkmates flinch.

“Sorry coach!” Phichit yells back, not entirely sincere.

“Chulanont…” That tone of voice was never good.

...

By the time Phichit gets out of the rink, he has a dozen more bruises, and his legs feel like jelly. 

Celestino had made him do a jumping set– singles, doubles, and every triple except the axel. And then, he had him repeat the triples. Never before has Phichit felt so in awe of Yuuri, who does that sort of thing _for fun_. By the time he’d gotten to the triples, he felt like he’d die.

He stumbles to the door of their apartment and pushes it open. There are voices from the living room– so Yuuri did bring his friend over.

He can see two heads huddled together on the couch– one short-haired and abyss-dark, the other in a ponytail and russet-brown.

They are speaking in Japanese, and looking at something together. Phichit creeps closer, intending to scare Yuuri, but then the friend laughs and leans her head on Yuuri’s shoulder, murmuring in a low voice. 

Perhaps more shockingly, Yuuri doesn’t go crimson. He just pulls the girl closer in a one-armed hug.

Phichit had teased him about this friend of his, but he’d never thought...

Yuuri is notoriously reticent about his personal life, even to his friends. Really, the only things Phichit knows about it involve his family, the onsen where he grew up, or Vicchan.

But, if Yuuri had a girlfriend, he would have told Phichit, right? _Right?_

“I’m home!” Phichit decides to announce. The two flinch apart, a blush spreading across Yuuri’s face, though the girl is unfazed.

“Hi! You must be Phichit-kun! Yuuri has told me a lot about you!” Her accent is significantly heavier than Yuuri’s, though still quite understandable. She stands up, turns fully to face Phichit, and bows.

“Nice to meet you…” He lets the sentence trail off upwards in a question.

She straightens. “Oh! Sorry for my manners.” She points at herself. “Yuuko Nishigori.”

“Nice to meet you, Yuuko.” Phichit says, putting on his best smile. “Do you have a place to stay?”

Her eyes widen. “ _Shimatta_.”

Yuuri laughs. “Aren’t you supposed to be more responsible now?” She swats him on the arm. “Phichit, she can stay with us, right?”

His smile feels plastic, but Phichit manages to say “sure!” with an acceptable level of sincerity.

Yuuri continues, “Yuuko can take my bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch–”

“Nope!” the woman interrupts him. “You are skating, you don’t need a bad back. You’re sleeping in your bed.”

“Yuuko, I can’t let a guest–”

She puts a finger to his lips. “It will be like old times!”

Yuuri winces. “I don’t think that’s really appropriate–”

“It’ll be fine!”

Phichit keeps smiling, but his thoughts are racing. Yuuko Nishigori seems incredibly comfortable with Yuuri, who is far less awkward than he normally is.

Abruptly, he is pulled out of his thoughts by Yuuri standing up. “Dinner should be about done. Why don’t you sit down, Phichit? You look practically dead on your feet.” He says, smiling teasingly.

Phichit flops on the couch, right next to where Yuuri had just vacated. Groaning, he complains, “Celestino made me do a jump reverse pyramid.”

“Like the ones I do?” Yuuri asks from the kitchen. Phichit groans louder.

“I didn’t even get to the quads! How do you do it?”

The woman across the couch laughs in unison as the man in the kitchen. She says, “Yuuri’s just kind of like that. Even when we were kids, he’d keep going and going, long after a normal human being would have taken a break.”

“Oh, like you’re one to talk, _Madonna_.” Yuuri says, coming back into the room and setting some bowls on the table. 

Yuuko just laughs, getting up gracefully and going to help Yuuri carry the food to the table. Phichit remains where he is. He doesn’t think that his legs will support his weight anymore.

“Come on, Phichit-kun, it’s time to eat!” Yuuko says brightly.

Phichit groans. “I don’t think I can get up.”

Yuuri appears in his peripheral vision, and he extends a hand to Phichit. He takes it, and Yuuri hauls him up with no effort. Shakily, he walks to the table, motivated only by the intensely appetizing scent of Yuuri’s cooking.

“ _Itadakimasu!_ ” The two Japanese people say in unison, before they all dig into the food.

“I’d forgotten how good your cooking is, Yuuri!” Yuuko says. “You’d make a fantastic wife.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes. “Uh huh. We both know who’s the fantastic wife, here.”

“I mean, I did come all this way…”

“And you hardly even warned your husband.” They laugh, Yuuko punching Yuuri lightly in the arm.

Phichit nearly drops his spoon. _He’s not… is he?_

Yuuri seems to notice his unusual clumsiness with the silverware. “Are you alright, Phichit?”

He offers a shaky smile. “Just tired, I guess.”

Yuuko nods sympathetically. “I’ll get you some ice while Yuuri does the dishes.”

“Seeing as Phichit’s _my_ friend, don’t you think I should be the one taking care of him?”

Yuuko waves him off. “Do the dishes, Yuuri.”

“ _Hai, hai,_ whatever you say, Yuu-chan.”

...

Phichit ends up falling asleep on the couch, feet resting on an ice pack and the other two people in the kitchen, putting away the dishes.

He wakes up in the middle of the night in his own bed, someone– probably Yuuri, seeing as Yuuko is very petite– having carried him to his room and tucked him in.

His legs feel much better now, and he swings them out of bed, stretching them. He walks to the kitchen, hoping for a glass of water, when he notices something strange.

Or rather, the lack of something strange.

No one is on the couch.

He sneaks towards Yuuri’s door, water abandoned. He walks slowly, carefully sidestepping the creaky board next to the light switch.

Very gently, he tries the handle. It’s unlocked, and Phichit cracks open the door.

In the dim light of the moon, he can see a big lump on Yuuri’s bed.

There are two heads on the pillows.

Phichit shuts the door.

_I could have sworn he was hitting on Victor Nikiforov at the banquet, though…_

Phichit is back in his bed before he realizes something that leaves a pit in his stomach.

_Oh my god every time I got him drunk and told him to go flirt– I was encouraging infidelity??_

The next morning, Phichit apologizes to a bewildered Yuuko.

Yuuri blinks in confusion.

…

 **has3tsuskate**  
[image: a selfie of Yuuri and Yuuko. They are both grinning at the camera. Yuuko is holding a cup of coffee, toasting the camera.]

 **has3tsuskate** I’m in Detroit with #yuurikatsuki !! I’ve missed him so much! He never comes to visit me, so I went to visit him >:(  
_Translated from Japanese_

> **forthe4rce** So i was scrolling thru the hashtag for yuuri katsuki and WHO IS SHE? She ain’t a skater that I know
> 
>  **iceicebabyy** omgggg another person with Yuuri content? Can anyone translate the caption i don’t know if I trust insta
>
>> **firetigermelon3 @iceicebabyy** its just the girl saying she’s in Detroit and that she misses Yuuri and that he never goes to visit her… therefore, it’s a safe assumption that they know each other quite well.
>> 
>>  **iceicebabyy @firetigermelon3** do they know each other or do they *know* each other is the question.
> 
>  **FanyuLibrary** her entire profile is just reuploads of skating and this woman with her friends lolol maybe she’s an old friend or a fan of the sport
>
>>  **viknikownsme @FanyuLibrary** uH DO YOU SEE WHERE YUURI’S HANDS ARE? HE’S LITERALLY HUGGING HER? IN NO OTHER PICTURES DOES HE DARE TOUCH ANYBODY. they’re in love. thanks for coming to my ted talk.

...

There is almost a physical relief of tension whenever Yuuko is around. Yuuri can feel his entire frame easing whenever he’s around her. It has been ages since Yuuri had slept so well– there was just something about hearing Yuuko’s distinctively slow breathing that was reassuring, nostalgic without the pang of grief. 

When she’d first arrived, Yuuri was hit by a wave of intense sadness, Yuuko walking next to him and his brain conjuring up the little yips and barks from their childhood. He would look back, and would see the empty space between them, a space that would perfectly accommodate an excitable toy poodle.

Yuuko never brings it up, but Yuuri knows that she’s aware of it. She starts walking closer to him, taking his hand that once held a leash. They grieve together, and eventually, somehow, Yuuri feels like he can move on. 

A childhood of following Yuuko has trained Yuuri into trusting her judgement and following her social cues– she drags Yuuri around Detroit, despite not knowing anything about it, and ends up more familiar with the people and the places that he is within the span of an afternoon.

It doesn’t hurt anymore when Yuuko stops to pet strangers’ dogs, and Yuuri ends up letting a poodle– a full sized, black one– clamber into his lap to lick his face.

It doesn’t hurt anymore. It just reminds him of the joy that he felt when Vicchan was still alive.

Exploring the hidden corners of the city and petting dogs fills a good chunk of their day, leading them all over the city. They end up at a public rink, and Yuuko walks inside without a backwards glance. Yuuri trails behind her, resigned to his fate.

“You do realize I have my real practice time later this afternoon, right?” Yuuri pleads halfheartedly.

Yuuko laughs, entirely unconcerned with his plight. “You and I both know that an hour at a public rink won’t wear you out in the slightest!”

Yuuri sighs, helping Yuuko rent some skates and pulling his own out of his backpack. They’d planned on going straight to the rink anyways.

Despite having retired from professional skating, it’s abundantly clear that Yuuko is still incredibly familiar with it. After a few circles around the rink, she’s acclimated with the feeling of the unfamiliar skates and has begun to skate circles around Yuuri, who elects to keep going at a leisurely pace around the rink and _not stand out, thank you very much._

It starts, as all things do with Yuuko, with a suggestion. A little kid comes up to her and shyly asks if she can teach her how to skate backwards. Then, Yuuko starts showing off a little, spinning around and doing little waltz jumps to the applause of a group of elementary schoolers. 

They end up in the center of the rink, most of the other people giving them a wide berth as they stick to the edges. Yuuri can see some of them– perhaps the parents of the children, video-taping the impromptu lesson on their phones. He looks away, his stomach filling with butterflies.

Casually, Yuuko asks him to help teach the kids how to do a waltz jump, and he would feel like a monster if he said no to the half-dozen eyes that turn to him pleadingly.

It’s a blessing that there isn’t enough space to do anything more than the basics– things that Yuuri’s been doing practically since he could walk.

“You’re really good at going backwards, mister!” one of the kids squeaks. Yuuri smiles, a warm, fond feeling rising in his chest.

“You’re doing really well! I bet you’ll be even better than me if you practice!” he reassures the child.

Yuuko, a short distance away, chortles. “Kid, he was much worse when he was little. But he practiced a lot, because he wanted to be as good as me,” she winks conspiratorially at the kids, “and now he can do really cool things.”

The whole flock of children look towards Yuuri. “Show us something!”

Yuuri looks towards Yuuko, who grins at him unapologetically. There isn’t nearly enough space for him to do anything super advanced, nor should he do any of the jumps, because frankly he’s afraid he’ll hit one of the kids in the face.

He ends up doing a twizzle, traveling in a straight line towards the children, spinning, and they shriek in excitement. Before he gets within two meters of them, he bends his knee into a sit spin, one leg extended. The spin slows and he straightens to the uproarious applause of children.

Behind the kids, Yuuko does an exaggerated curtsy, and despite half a decade without training with her, Yuuri instinctively bows back. The kids cheer louder.

Suddenly, the loudspeaker announces the time, and Yuuri realizes that his official rink time with Celestino– all the way across the city– is in less than half an hour.

“Sorry, guys, I have to be somewhere.” He says to the kids, who all look dejected. One of them plasters herself to his leg.

“No! Teach us how to do the cool spin thing!” Yuuri doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he really doesn’t have time to do that, with school and his own practice eating up the majority of his days.

“I, uh, have to–”

Luckily, Yuuko saves him. “Sorry children, we have to go. Maybe we’ll see you next time!” She pries the child off of his leg, and they rush out.

Yuuri doesn’t have a car– why would he need one, when the rink is jogging distance from his apartment, and his apartment is only a few minutes from campus? He regrets that now, as he and Yuuko race across Detroit, dodging angry drivers and jumping over graffiti-covered benches.

It kind of felt like they were teenagers again, running from the onsen to the beach to Ice Castle, laughing and teasing all the way.

They arrive with just a handful of minutes to spare, giggling. Yuuri feels lighter than he has in days– Yuuko has the uncanny ability to pull him out of whatever headspace he’s trapped himself in, washing away the anxiety until he’s in middle school again, skating just for the hell of it.

Skating just because he wanted to show her what he’s learned. Skating just because they both loved it.

Yuuri has missed having his childhood friend around.

…

Today is one of those days that Celestino has Yuuri scheduled without Phichit. Normally on these days, Yuuri arrives early, reviewing his programs in his head on the bleachers as he waits his turn. With Phichit, Yuuri is far less focused, the two often arriving together with mere moments to spare.

Celestino would be lying if he wasn’t worried at the fact that Yuuri still isn’t here, less than five minutes before his scheduled time.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Yuuri and an unfamiliar woman burst into the rink together, flushed red and panting, but with smiles on their faces. There’s something intensely reassuring about seeing color on Yuuri’s cheeks and a genuine smile on his lips. Too long has Celestino had to look at the grief-pale, plastic smiles that Yuuri would offer up with every insistence of “I’m fine.”

“You’re almost late, Katsuki!” Celestino calls, not meaning it in the slightest.

Sheepishly, Yuuri rubs the back of his head. “Sorry, we lost track of time.”

Celestino rakes an eye over the pair, taking in the rumpled clothes and the heavy breathing. “Doing what, exactly?” He says, raising an eyebrow.

Yuuri looks down, embarrassed. “We, uh… went skating? And lost track of time?” he repeats.

“Skating.” He repeats doubtfully. “Right before you came here. To skate.”

“Yes?” There’s something guilty in Yuuri’s voice.

“You better not be too tired to practice, Katsuki.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not, don’t worry.”

Celestino sighs in exasperation. “Get your skates on.” 

“Yes coach.”

He can’t help but smile. It doesn’t really matter what he had been up to with the woman, so long as she pulled him out of that funk. Celestino thinks that he knows people who have mourned family members for less time than Yuuri had mourned his dog.

Even after Yuuri leaves to put his skates on, the woman sticks around, looking at the rink. After scanning the ice and the boards with an appraising eye, she walks towards Celestino and bows. “My name is Yuuko Nishigori. I’m a friend of Yuuri’s from Japan. You must be Coach Cialdini.”

Celestino holds out a hand for a brief moment, then thinks better of it and mimics her bow. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Nishigori. Call me Celestino– everyone does.”

She smiles. “Celestino-san, how is Yuuri skating?”

“He’s doing well.” he says, only halfway-lying.

She turns toward the rink, watching as Yuuri steps on, then does his customary warm up with compulsory figures. 

“Is he? He’s stiffer than he used to be.”

“I make sure that my skaters are in good health–” Celestino begins indignantly.

Yuuko waves her hands, cutting him off. “No, no, that’s not what I meant! I’m sure Yuuri’s flexibility is fine!” She trails off, eyes glued to the boy on the ice. “I just know that he gets nervous, especially when people think he should be able to do something, and then he is worse.”

Celestino pauses. “He is sloppier,” he admits. 

The woman smiles at him. “I skated with him when we were kids. He has always been like that.”

“How do we fix it, then?”

Yuuko smirks. “I’ll show you after he has run his programs a few times,” she promises.

Celestino grits his teeth, but nods. He cups his hands around his mouth. “Yuuri! Do your short program!”

…

Yuuri is… fine. He doesn’t fall, only stumbles briefly, and he’s definitely smoother than she had feared.

He can do so much better, though. Yuuko has seen it. On long nights, when it was just the two of them in a rink, when they were both round-faced with youth, he had shown her a different world. But here, where she’s perched in the seats overlooking the rink, she can see the hesitance in his steps, the shackles of his own mind bolting him to the ground.

Even in the video of his record-breaking skate, she could see something lacking. The memory of countless demonstrations in a ghostly rink have seared his capabilities into each neuron in her brain– she wants the world to be able to see it too. He had beaten Victor Nikiforov by a handful of points– what would the uproar be if he could beat him by a landslide?

After the second time she watches him skate his short program, she makes her way down to the rinkside.

“Yuuri! Show me your short!”

He glances towards Celestino, as if asking for permission, but Yuuko snaps her fingers.

“Yuuri.” She beckons him closer. He complies, and she goes on her tiptoes and grabs his shoulders. “Show _me_ your short. You’re not showing anybody else.” All of a sudden, it’s as if his eyes clear– mud washing off the heart of an oak, revealing the rich patterns of the wood.

She smiles and releases him, watching him skate off. Out of the corner of her eye, Yuuko can see Celestino watching her, a curious expression on his face.

The moment Yuuri starts to skate, Yuuko knows that this will be a good one. It’s still not the transcendent skate of her memories, but all of a sudden, the skate is fluid, looking more like his Autumn Classic free skate than his Grand Prix qualifiers. He keeps his original jumps, but now it looks like he has extra time in the air– he delays starting them, and holds still after the requisite rotations, hovering for just a moment longer than what appears to be natural.

Just like back home, he uses her as a spotting point– eyes fixed on her face, not registering anybody else around the rink.

Yuuko politely applauds when he finishes, but before Yuuri can skate towards her, she cups her hands around her mouth and yells, “Now show me your _real_ short, Yuu-kun!”

Celestino makes an aborted hand motion. “I think he should take a break before–”

Yuuri starts skating again.

Once again, it is missing that mystical element that Yuuko _swears_ that he is capable of pouring into a program, but the rest of the skate is purely that of a boy that wants to show off for his friend.

Celestino whistles quietly as Yuuri whips through the program, jumps and technical elements swapped around as easily as breathing, doubles turning to triples before his eyes. But in a rink where the speakers aren’t playing music, that low whistle is very audible.

Yuuri glances over at the sound, partway into an entrance for a jump, and sees Celestino, and just locks up. He’s halfway in the air, and over-rotates the axel, spinning more than a quarter turn too far around, hits the ice strangely, and falls heavily, arm just barely saving his head from bouncing on the ice.

Yuuko glares at Celestino, who winces apologetically.

“Yuuri! _Daijobu?_ ”

He gets up, patting off his sides and rotating his ankles and wrists. After assessing all his extremities, he calls, “I’m fine! Nothing broken or sprained, though I’m gonna have some _very_ purple bruises.”

He skates over, and Yuuko hands him the water sitting on the rink wall.

“Sorry, Yuuri.” Celestino says. “I think your practice can end here– go home and ice your bruises, please.”

He looks at Yuuko consideringly, then nods, as if he likes what he sees. “Miss- uh- Nishigori, was it?” At her nod of confirmation, he continues, “Please make sure that this one doesn’t neglect to ice himself. He forgets, and then comes in and makes his bruises worse.”

She laughs. “That’s also something that has not changed.” She hands Yuuri his skate guards. “I will take care of him, don’t worry,” she says, bowing.

Celestino awkwardly bows back. “Thank you. I hope you see you around, Miss Nishigori. You seem to be a good influence on Yuuri.” He says, smiling. 

Yuuri’s quiet correction of “ _Mrs._ Nishigori” is drowned out by Celestino’s bellowing at one of the other skaters on the rink, who had begun a spin far too close to another skater.

...

A new routine develops. Yuuko spends time with Yuuri outside of the rink, chooses a few practices to sit in on, and spends the rest of her time at the other rink, holding impromptu classes for children. The parents will sometimes give her money, which she likes very much. 

She also spends a lot of time catching him up on news of home and calling the triplets. After the initial novelty of meeting a world-record holding skater wears off, Yuuri is forced to sit there, red-faced, as Yuuko regales her children with tales of Yuuri’s childhood. 

It’s an enjoyable experience for all parties. Except Yuuri.

Yuuri doesn’t seem aware of it, but Yuuko very quickly notices that everyone seems to think that she and Yuuri are romantically involved. The moment she realizes this fact, she has to excuse herself to the restroom to laugh until she runs out of air, then calls her husband.

He doesn’t seem to find it nearly as funny as she does, but that’s alright. Yuuko has never once entertained romantic thoughts about Yuuri– he’s too much like a sibling to her.

No matter how blatantly people imply things about their relationship, Yuuri doesn’t seem to get it. In fact, he tends to make things worse.

\- “You’re spending a lot of time with that girl.”

“We haven’t seen each other in way too long! I missed her!”

-“Dang, your _friend_ is really awesome.”

“Yeah, I’m lucky to have her.”

-“How close are you two, really?”

“We’re really close! I’ve known her for forever– she’s practically family.”

-“Do your parents like her?”

“Like her? They probably like her better than they like me!”

Really, it’s a wonder that Yuuri made it this far in life.

As the World Championships creep ever closer, Yuuri starts spending more nights at the skating rink. At first, Yuuko would wake in the middle of the night, her human-sized heat-pack missing, and she would have to go track him down.

Eventually, he stops trying to sneak out and just shakes her awake when he leaves.

And on these quiet nights, they work on Yuuri’s programs.

And Yuuko makes sure that he is showing _her_ every single time.

With only a few weeks left to go for Worlds, he finds the magic that Yuuko had nearly given up on recovering. It’s nearly midnight, and the lonely lights have begun to flicker, the blue fluorescence gilding everything in silver. Yuuri wants to try his short program.

And Yuuko tells him, the way she has told him a thousand times before, “Skate for me, Yuuri.”

And Yuuri requests, the way he has requested a thousand times before, “Keep your eyes on me.”

What Yuuri is only nominally aware of is the fact that Yuuko has had her phone propped up on the wall every night they do this. She doesn’t record him– she has shown him multiple times that her camera roll is empty of these late-night skating sessions.

But there’s something different about this time. Maybe it's the lighting, maybe it’s the mood, maybe it's the passage of the moon, compounding on the artificial light.

For the first time, Yuuko hits record.

And for the first time in over half a decade, Yuuri pulls apart reality with the blades on his feet.

It doesn’t have anything concrete that is different from the other times Yuuri has done this program for her. There are no extra spins on a jump, no flair on the steps, no surprise combinations.

But there is something fundamentally different. Something _more_. Yuuko can feel it pulling at her sternum, calling her to the ice.

He skates like a revelation– the realization of what is right in the world.

All too soon, Yuuri finishes his program. He beams at Yuuko, for once totally comfortable in his own success. She claps, but her mind is still occupied by the glimpses of a realm long forgotten that were called into existence.

She is not prepared when he mouths _“keep your eyes on me”_ and immediately launches into his free skate.

She is not prepared to see that ethereal performance be elevated to something beyond otherworldly. She doesn’t know nearly enough words in either language she speaks to describe the impossibility of what he does.

If the short program was over far too quickly, then the free skate extends every moment, every heartbeat, until it feels like the width of human emotion is encapsulated within a single program. It feels like living a lifetime with Yuuri, a tale of birth, struggle, growth, change, and then, a series of increasingly climactic events that culminates in something truly groundbreaking.

And the way he decides to end the whole program… Yuuko shivers, and it has nothing to do with the ice.

The only thing left to do, now, is ensure that the rest of the world (and the ISU) can see what Yuuko has always been able to.

It’s not until after Worlds that she remembers to send the video to Lutz. Her triplets hold that fact over her head for _weeks._

...

 **phichit+chu**  
[image: Yuuri and Yuuko sitting on a couch, sharing a bowl of popcorn. Yuuri’s glasses reflect the blue of the screen, obscuring his eyes, but his face is very calm. Yuuko seems more occupied with the popcorn than the movie. Phichit’s face can be seen in the corner, looking frightened and confused.]

 **phichit+chu** we’re watching classic horror movies because **@has3tsuskate** hasn’t seen them, and neither her or #yuurikatsuki are at all fazed. ARE THEY HUMAN?

> **has3tsuskate** Yuuri is not scared of horror movies because “there is nothing scarier than what my own mind can conjure on a day-to-day basis”. I am not scared because these movies are not scary. I have seen far worse.
>
>> **christophe-gc @has3tsuskate** respect.
> 
>  **firetigermelon3** are we just gonna ignore the fact that those two are practically cuddling??????
> 
>  **v-nikiforov** what. WHAT. WHEN. WHY. HOW. WHO. WHAT.
> 
>  **yuri-plisetsky** and here you can see **@v-nikiforov** having a breakdown over someone else’s life choices. that’s new, usually it’s just his own.
> 
>  **iceicebabyy** awwww they’re so cute together! Are they confirmed to be in a relationship??

...

There is a hockey game interfering with the skate schedules today. Normally, Celestino only likes to have a few skaters on the ice at a time, but today, unavoidably, there are more than just a handful.

The Junior skaters are already up in the stands, waiting their turn, with a few hockey skaters milling about. There are more than a few curious eyes pointed at the Senior figure skaters on the ice.

Yuuri notices this, and almost immediately stumbles out of a double toe loop during his warm-up.

“Don’t worry about it, Yuuri!” Phichit calls, casting a worried glance at him. He seems kind of pale, and his eyes keep darting towards the Junior skaters.

 _It’s the weight of expectations,_ Phichit realizes. There’s no way to stop them from looking, though, and suddenly he feels incredibly helpless.

They fumble through their warmups, Phichit desperately trying to distract Yuuri from the watchful eyes and only partially succeeding. Celestino has them run their programs, and Yuuri does them… moderately acceptably. As in, nowhere near where he should be, with Worlds just around the corner.

There is a murmur when he flubs his second jump in a row, and Phichit can see the whites of his eyes from where he stands, against the wall near Celestino.

He doesn’t know how to help Yuuri.

But apparently, his girl friend could.

“Yuuri!” Yuuko shouts, her voice carrying easily across the ice. “Come here.”

Celestino doesn’t object, though Phichit can’t think of why. Yuuko doesn’t show up very often to practices that Phichit is also in, but he thinks that she’d just distract Yuuri more.

Yuuri gets closer, and Phichit pats him on the shoulder. He gets a small, grateful smile in return, and then Yuuko grabs the collar of his shirt and yanks him down so they are eye level.

Phichit looks away politely, but he’s close enough to hear the girl practically growl, “Skate for me, Yuuri.”

“But-” Yuuri begins, cut off by Yuuko shaking him.

She says something, then, in Japanese, very slowly and clearly. Phichit looks back at them, and they are so close that their noses are practically touching.

Phichit watches incredulously as Yuuri’s terror-wide eyes soften, and he replies as if by rote, the Japanese words melodic and familiar in his mouth.

Yuuko scans his face, and finds whatever she was looking for. She nods decisively and releases Yuuri. He goes towards the center of the rink, and locks eyes with Yuuko.

No more words are exchanged, but the air feels different. The other skaters have noticed, too, and everyone has slowed to a stop, keeping to the edges of the rink.

Phichit almost wants to say something, to tell them not to watch, tell them to not make Yuuri more nervous, but he’s afraid of shattering the moment.

When Yuuri starts skating, any doubts Phichit had were wiped away. He can _feel_ the wonder, the air itself humming with some quality that fills his lungs and resonates with every other person in the rink, a web of people bound with ties that are not physical nor mental, but something more.

There are feelings, unnamable but powerful, building in him, growing from a place inside that isn’t any part of the physical human body. He can’t tear his eyes away from his friend, who had been hiding the sorcery in his skates, who had withheld this experience from the world.

All too soon, it’s over, and Phichit sucks in a startled breath. He’s not certain that he’d breathed at all during that short program. Yuuri, upon the conclusion of his skate, seems to have realized where exactly he was and begins to blush furiously.

There are emotions painted on every face he can see, indescribable but each one a reflection of the way they were all elevated to an entirely new plane of existence.

Every face, but Yuuko. The only thing he can see written on her face is something that he _can_ name– pride.

A murmur sweeps through the rink as Yuuri awkwards starts skating back to Celestino, who appears to have been struck speechless.

“How did you do that? How did _he_ do that?” Phichit demands of Yuuko, voice unexpectedly hoarse. 

She holds his gaze steadily. “He is terrified of skating for a crowd. He can’t control what they think, or what they expect. So he assumes they all have the highest possible expectations for him, and he freaks out.”

Yuuri gets to the wall, and Yuuko pauses to give him a hug, then shoves him towards Celestino.

She continues, “You just have to remind him that the crowd is a group of people who, in the long run, won’t affect his life very much. Then, you give him someone he can skate for, who he knows holds no expectations and no judgements.”

There is steel behind the mahogany of her eyes.

“He skates alright when he is skating for a thousand people. He skates better when he is alone.”

Phichit nods. “I know that, but-”

Yuuko holds up a hand.

“He skates best when he is skating for an audience of one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why is this chapter literally double the length of my second longest chapter. its over 6k words. yuuko's a beast.
> 
> We're reaching the end of the ideas that I have for this fic. If you have any requests, it's now or never!
> 
> Updates are going to be much slower, now, because I have so much work that I have to get done before august starts lol 
> 
> Next time: before the world championships


	9. Victor Nikiforov Loses His Mind: The Sequel

Georgi Popovich sprains his ankle overrotating a triple axel.

Yakov wasn’t planning on letting him compete at Worlds, anyways. Georgi had just gotten a new girlfriend, and his time management skills– already abominable– had plummeted.

But, it wasn’t just Georgi who had started focusing on his axels. 

There was a day, shortly after Victor’s free skate record got broken, that everyone walked into Yakov’s rink with their heads buried in their phones.

That day, Yuri Plisetsky refused to do anything but practice his triple axel, which was shaky at the best of times. All the other jumps, he attacks with his special brand of aggression, but something about the axel spooks him. Normally, Yakov would commend this kind of motivation, but there was something very aggressive about Yuri’s behavior that suggested that this was born of something external.

Then, Yakov catches Victor attempting a _quad axel._

“ _Vitya!_ What are you doing, you idiot boy?”

Victor, from his position sprawled out on the ice, pushes a hand through his fringe. “Practicing a jump,” he mumbles.

“A jump that isn’t in your program? A jump that isn’t in _anybody’s_ program because it’s _practically impossible_?” Yakov’s volume grows, fueled by his rage at the airheadedness of his top skater.

Victor sits up, protesting. “No, here’s the thing, there’s this skater–”

Yakov holds up a hand. “No. The Grand Prix Final is too close for you to practice some idiotic jump for the sole reason that you want to surprise your audience.”

Something in his face drops. “But, Yakov, I-”

“I don’t want to hear it. Let’s see your step sequence from your free again.”

“Yakov, wait, can you just-”

“Victor Nikiforov, if you do not start practicing your program I will make you run suicides until we leave for Sochi.”

Unsurprisingly, Victor’s mouth closes with a _click_ and he starts skating properly.

From the other side of the rink, Yuri Plisetsky shrieks, “Yeah, don’t bother trying, you old geezer! I’m gonna be the first one to land a quad axel in this rink!”

Yakov rounds on him. “Work on your triple axel first, you idiot child!”

He turns to address the rink at large. “Why are all you fools so fixated on the quad axel all of a sudden?”

A phone is handed to him, courtesy of one Mila Babicheva, and Yakov looks down to see one of those social media applications, Instabook or Snapgram or something, open to a person’s profile. Mila reaches over and clicks the most recent post.

And Yakov suddenly understands why everyone is so fixated on this impossible jump.

Because suddenly, someone has proved it possible.

…

Victor Nikiforov is _not_ waiting for someone in the hotel lobby. He just… likes spending time down here. Facing the door. He has his phone in his hands, but he isn’t looking at it. The screen isn’t even on. If it was, it would be open to a certain set of photographs from Sochi, just a few months prior.

He absolutely is _not_ paying special attention to every dark-haired man coming through the doors.

And he definitely isn’t beating himself up over the fact that he _didn’t recognize_ Yuuri Katsuki at the Grand Prix Final.

Victor had no idea that he would look so different off the ice. He was expecting the sharp, slicked hair of his programs, or the fierce, dolled up pictures from Phichit’s Instagram. 

What he got was an adorable, soft-spoken boy with a heart of gold and abs of steel. 

And now, this boy _might_ be taken. _Might_. Probably not, but it is a distinct possibility. Victor would certainly not be surprised. He wouldn’t even be mad.

(He would definitely be mad. _If only he’d gotten there first, if only Yuuri was interested in him, if only if only if only…_ )

The hotel doors slide open, and a large Italian man with a ponytail steps through. Victor sits up, leaning forward. _Celestino Cialdini._

Behind him walks a man with chocolate skin, dragging a carry-on suitcase. _Phichit Chulanont._

And a few steps behind him, a dark-haired, bespectacled man. _Yuuri Katsuki._

Now that Victor knows what he’s looking for, he can see the sharp line of his jaw, the glasses giving it an illusory softness. He can see the delicate swoop of his nose, the slight upturn in the corners of the lips. Yuuri is resplendent, even in sweatpants and a hoodie. He is magnetic, eyes half-closed from travel-exhaustion. He is…

He is holding a woman’s hand. The woman from Phichit’s post.

She doesn’t look all that awake either, but she is holding Yuuri’s hand and _far_ too close to him for Victor’s tastes. The woman is practically leaning on his shoulder as they walk.

Begrudgingly, Victor has to admit that she’s pretty. She’s smaller than Yuuri– petite, delicate, like a fairy– and soft-looking. Not like Victor, who is both taller and broader than Yuuri, all sharp angles and dramatic lines. She has red-brown hair where Victor has silver-blond, dark eyes where Victor has light.

Victor feels like something in his chest disappears. It feels like something behind his sternum snaps, and all of a sudden whatever was there is just _gone_. It leaves him feeling bereft, empty, drained of a feeling that has been a constant over the past few months. It has been replaced with a different feeling, one that boils up from his gut and down from the back of his throat.

It’s not jealousy, that’d be ridiculous. Victor is well aware of the fact that Yuuri Katsuki was very drunk when he’d seen him last– drunk enough that there is little reason to assume he’d have remembered that night in Sochi. He probably didn’t mean anything from that night– how could he, when he had such a lovely girl waiting for him back home?

It’s also not disappointment, of course not, because Victor Nikiforov doesn’t get _hung up_ over foreign skaters that he’s only met once. He doesn’t.

(He totally does.)

…

Yuuko gets her own hotel room, and Phichit and Yuuri share, like every time they’re both at a tournament. 

Normally, just having Phichit around calms Yuuri’s nerves, but this time, it doesn’t quite cut it. They still have a few days before the actual competition starts, but already Yuuri can feel the panic creeping up his throat.

It’s so much worse, because Yuuri just _knows_ that everyone will be watching his every move during warm-ups– that there will be an order of magnitude more eyes on him during both his skates during the competition. Every single person in that crowd, on the television, will be watching his every move, his every mistake. 

They expect greatness from him.

The higher you fly, the harder you fall.

Despite the exhaustion from a plane ride, Yuuri can’t sleep. Phichit’s breathing is deep and even, from the other bed, but it’s not the same. 

_I’ve been spoiled, these past few weeks_ , Yuuri thinks ruefully. He rolls out of his bed and pulls on a pair of slippers and his oversized hoodie. He walks quietly to the door, gently pulling it open and slipping out.

Yuuko’s room is just down the hall, and Yuuri knocks on the door. Ten seconds pass. Twenty. Thirty. He begins to doubt his actions, a thought in the back of his mind insisting that _you can deal with this by yourself she’s annoyed with you she doesn’t like you anymore why are you so childish everyone else can sleep you’ve woken her up–_

At the forty-five second mark, Yuuko pulls open the door.

She takes one look at Yuuri and lets him in.

She asks no questions, just pulls back the blankets and lets Yuuri crawl in her bed, after he shucks off the hoodie and the slippers.

Yuuri starts counting her breaths– they shift to her almost-worryingly-slow sleep rhythm after only twenty-seven.

He is warm, and he is safe.

It feels like they are children again. The night before his Junior debut, his first international competition, Yuuri was a mess. He had been fourteen, and his anxiety levels seemed to be on an exponentially increasing curve.

Yuuko had been fifteen at the time, taller and stronger than he was. She was the best skater at the rink, the best person he’d known.

And she’d wrestled him into her bed, and held him close, and he’d fallen asleep to her heartbeat.

For his entire Junior career, Yuuko had held him when he’d needed it and soothed his anxieties. She was the one that he’d turned to when he needed help in school. She was the first person he told when there was a girl he liked, when there was a boy he’d kissed.

Mari might have been his biological sister, but she was almost seven years older– practically a third parent.

Yuuko was his older sister, in every way that counted.

Yuuri cautiously shifts closer, and Yuuko, her breaths never faltering, wraps her arms around him.

Despite now being taller than Yuuko, there is something achingly familiar about falling asleep with her comforting presence around him. It's not quite the same– her hands don’t touch behind his back anymore, he can’t curl up and push his feet into her knees. But there is still something very soothing about it.

He falls asleep to the gentle rise and fall of her breathing, and the steady beat of her heart.

…

Victor is up at a decent time, meaning that no one fun is awake yet. He scrolls through Instagram, opening stories that are all, essentially, people complaining about long plane rides.

Phichit has just posted a video on his story, with the little green circle that means it’s restricted to just “close friends”. If Victor knew anything about him, this circle of “close friends” was probably in the triple digits.

He opens the video, and watches Phichit’s face fill the screen.

His makeup is freshly, expertly applied, and he immediately launches into a rant.

“Okay, so I’m sharing a room with another skater, right? And he’s supposed to be in the other bed-” the camera turns around, revealing an empty bed with rumpled sheets.

“-and he’s _gone_. The sheets are cold, so he’s been gone for a while, and I woke up _really_ early because of jet lag, because that’s what happens when I’m jet-lagged– I wake up early instead of sleeping in, isn’t that weird?– and he wasn’t there. And I know Yuuri. He’s one of the people that sleeps _in_ with jet lag.”

Phichit brings the camera closer to his face, whispering, “Let’s find out where he went.”

The next video plays, and it begins with the camera pointed at a nondescript keycard.

“I nabbed this from Yuuri’s” Phichit hesitates, “ _friend_ , and so we’re gonna see if she knows where he is.”

Phichits walks to a door, carefully keeping the room number out of the frame, and swipes the card.

The light blinks green, and Phichit pushes open the door.

Victor sees that there is only one bed in the room.

“ _Oh my god Yuuri you didn’t._ ” Phichit’s voice shakes as he tries to keep his voice down. He walks closer to the bed, pointing the camera at the lump of blankets in the middle.

There is a head of long hair, the brown strands covering the person’s face.

And there is Yuuri Katsuki, with his head halfway smashed into the woman’s chest.

Victor throws his phone. It hits the wall and bounces pathetically onto the carpet. He buries his face in his hands.

There is an answering _thud_ from the wall that his phone had just slammed into, and Yuri Plisetsky’s distinctive voice screams through the wall, _“The fuck do you want, you bastard?”_

Victor says nothing. He can’t.

…

“Hi mom! Hello Yuuri Katsuki!” A trio of high-pitched voice chorus through a phone speaker.

Yuuri groans. “Just call me Yuuri, okay? I’m practically your uncle!”

Six eyes stare at him through the tiny screen. “You’re a _world record holder._ ” One of the triplets– Loop, maybe?– points out.

“I was literally, like, the fourth person to hold you three.”

“You can do a _quadruple axel._ ” A different triplet points out.

There’s nothing Yuuri can do but hide his face in his hands. Yuuko interjects, laughing. “Oh, Axel, he might be able to do a quad axel but he fell flat on his face trying to do an euler the other day.”

Phichit had lost his mind over that, Yuuri remembers. One of the hockey players had arrived early, and stood at the edge of the rink, staring at him.

The guy– Dominic? Derek? Daniel?– was not a small person, and was a prominent figure in his periphery. Yuuri had tried to push him out of his mind, and was practicing a combination– one that he’d wanted to put in a program for points, a triple axel, and euler as a transition, and then a triple flip.

He’d done the triple axel well, but as he jumped from one foot to the other in the single rotation for a euler, he caught sight of the hockey player. And he flinched, landed awkwardly on the outside of his blade instead of the inside, and down he went.

It was humiliating.

Yuuko clearly doesn’t think so, as she retells the story with great enthusiasm and embellishment. She wasn’t even there that day– she’s retelling the story that she’d heard from Phichit.

Yuuri pouts. “Don’t put it like that, Yuuko!” He protests. All of a sudden, his phone buzzes. He pulls it out, seeing that it’s a text from Phichit.

“Phichit wants me to meet him somewhere, he says it’s urgent. Sorry, I’ll talk to you guys later!” Yuuri says, texting Phichit back and standing up. Yuuko smiles gently.

“You go on and see what the emergency is,” Yuuko says. “I’m gonna talk to my girls for a bit longer. I’ll catch up– forward me the address.”

Yuuri does so, then waves. “Bye Lutz! Bye Axel! Bye Loop!”

“Goodbye, Yuuri Katsuki!”

“Call me Yuuri!”

…

Phichit wants coffee. He’s been up since dark o’clock in the morning, and it’s past noon now. He finds some hole-in-the-wall place, an artisanal shop. Phichit refuses to fund the corporate greed of Starbucks.

He sits by the window and orders something sweet and full of espresso, scrolling aimlessly through his phone.

Someone slides into the seat opposite him, and he looks up to see big, blue-green eyes.

“Phichit?” asks Victor Nikiforov. Phichit just blinks, once, twice, and then rubs his eyes. Victor Nikiforov does not go away. Victor sets down a drink– something tall and blended and icy, sweet-smelling even from across the table.

“Holy shit it’s Victor Nikiforov. _In person._ ” he mutters under his breath, already opening his text messages to tell Yuuri to get his perfectly round ass over to the coffeeshop.

Victor Nikiforov doesn’t say anything, just sits and wrings his hands. He doesn’t quite make eye contact, looking at the center of the table between them.

Several times, he takes a deep breath, opens his mouth, then closes it. 

Phichit tries to say something reassuring, but what actually comes out is: “Hello Victor Nikiforov it’s so good to see you in person it’s totally surreal to _actually_ be talking to you– I know we’ve been texting for a while now but you’re actually Victor Nikiforov and oh wow I’m rambling.”

Phichit blames Yuuri. His fanboyishness must be contagious. 

Victor’s shoulders loosen with every word that comes out of Phichit’s mouth– the conversation clearly in familiar territory for him.

He offers Phichit a smile. “Please, call me Victor. We’re hardly strangers, now, are we?”

Phichit collects himself, then shakes his head. “Of course not– though, now that I have you in person, I don’t suppose you’d mind signing something for me?”

Victor agrees, and Phichit pulls out a framed photograph, from one of Victor’s old skates. He hasn’t told Yuuri, but he stole the picture from his nightstand right before they left for Worlds. There is _no way_ Yuuri isn’t going to freak out over the incredibly generous and benevolent actions of his beautiful roommate.

He slides the picture out of the frame and passes it, with a marker, over to Victor. He has a curious expression on his face as he looks at the photo, but signs it anyways.

Phichit tucks the autograph into his bag, then looks at Victor, who is worrying at his lip, clearly lost in thought. All of a sudden, Phichit is reminded that Victor, at the end of the day, is just a man. A human, mortal and emotional and insecure just like anybody else.

“Did you need something from me?” he prompts gently.

A furrow appears between Victor’s pale eyebrows, and he considers his hands.

“You post a lot about Yuuri Katsuki.” He begins, each word sounding like a struggle. His accent deepens.

“Yeah…” 

“And recently, you posted a picture of Yuuri with a woman…”

“Yeah…”

“And, well, I was wondering about–”

The door to the coffee shop opens, and, as if summoned, Yuuri walks in, looking down on his phone.

There is no way he dressed himself today– his jeans hug his thighs just enough to be suggestive, but tasteful. Instead of his customary hoodie, Yuuri’s in a cream-colored, knit sweater, loose at first glance but hinting at the strong shoulders beneath.

Victor’s mouth snaps shut audibly, and he swallows hard. Phichit waves. “Yuuri! Over here!” He calls.

Yuuri turns to the table, a smile growing as he spots Phichit, and then his entire body freezes when he sees Victor Nikiforov at the table.

Phichit stands up and drags Yuuri closer, pulling him into the chair next to him. Yuuri stumbles, eyes never leaving Victor’s face.

Phichit glances over at Victor, amused, and is astonished to find that Victor is looking back at Yuuri with a nearly identical expression of wonder and amazement.

The table is dead silent for an uncomfortably long time.

Phichit, being the only one who is not entirely socially incognizant, slurps loudly at his coffee.

Yuuri snaps out of his trance, and immediately ducks his head, trying to hide his face into the neck of his sweater.

“I, uh… it’s… uh, it’s really– I mean-” Yuuri stammers. Victor blinks, then shakes his head slightly, as if trying to shake off cobwebs.

“You’re Yuuri Katsuki.” Victor says reverently. 

“ _You’re Victor Nikiforov_.” Yuuri replies, mirroring his tone. Phichit has heard devout Catholics who speak of their god with less respect and wonder in their voices.

“I got his autograph for you, Yuuri.” Phichit interjects, pulling the picture out of his bag and passing it to Yuuri.

Yuuri whispers, “Ohmigod Phichit! You’re ama– hang on, is this mine?” glancing between his roommate and his idol.

Phichit is suddenly struck with the irrepressible urge to cause havoc. “Yes, it is.” He whispers, then raises his voice so Victor will definitely hear him say, “I stole it off of your bedside table before we left.”

Yuuri groans and hides his face in his hands, cheeks flushing under his fingers. To his surprise, Phichit sees a delicate red bloom across Victor’s face as well, immediately noticeable against his winter-pale skin.

“I really should have stolen more of your things, I think, because,” Phichit looks directly at Victor Nikiforov, “Yuuri has, like, seventeen-”

“Phichit, no!” Yuuri shouts, one hand slapping across his face in an attempt to cover his mouth. Phichit leans out of reach, laughing, and pushes Yuuri back. 

“Phichit, yes!” he replies. “Hey, remember that time when–”

“Not another word, Chulanont, or I will tell our landlord about your hamsters.” Yuuri threatens. “I swear, the things I do for you–”

Yuuri goes completely still when Victor snorts. He and Phichit both turn their heads at the best figure skater in history, and see him chortling into his napkin, face breathless-red and eyes joy-bright.

…

As soon as Yuuri is out of earshot, Yuuko cups one hand around her mouth and leans in, as if telling a secret. Her children huddle closer.

“I’ve actually gotten plane tickets for you guys and your dad to come watch Worlds– I got the event tickets from Yuuri’s coach. You guys can’t make a nuisance until after the free skate, though, okay? Yuuri gets very shy.”

Yuuko is prepared for the high-pitched squealing. Her triplets shriek in excitement, and they grab the tablet and take off, presumably to find Takeshi.

“Dad! Dad! Are we going to watch Worlds, for real?”

Yuuko can’t see him, but she can hear her husband’s amusement. “Yes, your mother called, we’re gonna go and see your Uncle Yuuri, isn’t that going to be fun?”

They cheer, and Yuuko is afraid that the tablet will get dropped. Luckily, Takeshi seems to have noticed that it is still on, and divests the triplets of it. He flips the camera around, so that she can see her children take off screaming out of the house, presumably to brag about the news.

“They’re certainly excited.” Yuuko comments. Takeshi flips the camera back around, and smiles warmly at her. 

“How are you doing, love?”

“I’m doing alright– Yuuri’s less nervous than he could be, which is as much as I could have hoped for. How about you? How are you holding up without me?” She asks teasingly.

Takeshi lets out a defeated sigh. “I’m never letting you leave me alone with the kids again. How did you deal with this when I went on business trips?”

Yuuko laughs. “This is divine retribution!”

“You’re so mean to me.”

“But you know it’s because I love you, Take.”

Takeshi sighs, then smiles fondly.

“I love you too, Yuuko.”

She hangs up the phone first, then sets off, routing the address that Yuuri had forwarded to her.

Phichit did say it was urgent– she’d better hurry.

…

When Phichit had brought up his posters, Yuuri had reverted into a primal state, driven by panic. He hadn’t even considered how _Victor Nikiforov_ would react to his entirely uncouth behavior. 

Luckily, it looks like he was just amused, and Yuuri hurriedly sits back up and straightens his sweater while Victor catches his breath and composes himself. Phichit doesn’t look fazed at all– he’s gone back to sipping his drink as if nothing had happened. There’s a twinkle in those brown eyes, though, one that Yuuri definitely doesn’t trust.

Eventually, Victor stops laughing and takes a sip of his drink.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Yuuri Katsuki.” He says, extending a hand across the table.

Numbly, Yuuri takes his hand. “Thanks!” he squeaks. He can’t believe that he’s talking to Victor Nikiforov. Who is shaking his hand. “Call me Yuuri, please!”

“Then you must call me Victor,” he says, smiling beautifically. He smiles widely, the expression bright and open in a way that Yuuri has hardly ever seen on video.

When Victor lets go, Yuuri can’t help but look at his palm. He squints, almost certain that there is now something fundamentally different, after having been in contact with the angel of figure skating himself.

All of a sudden, Phichit chokes, one hand holding a napkin up to his mouth. 

“Are you okay?” Yuuri asks, turning to Phichit worriedly.

He wipes his mouth, wheezing, and gasps out, “I just remembered something funny, is all.”

“Do you need me to get water, or…” Victor offers.

“Nah, I’m good, pretend I’m not here. I’m just gonna dramatically tweet that I nearly died via adorable roommate and coffee.” Phichit waves their concern away.

“Phichit!” Yuuri scolds, cheeks almost permanently red. “You can’t just say that!”

“I can if it’s true!” Phichit says, a shit-eating grin pasted across his face.

Yuuri groans and tips forward, forehead colliding with the table with a muted _thud._

Victor chortles. “I’m on Phichit’s side, this time.”

Though neither of the other people at the table can see his face, Yuuri pouts. Phichit and Victor take turns poking fun at Yuuri, who decides to resolutely keep his head on the table. Less chance of saying something wrong if he’s saying it to the dark wood of the table, rather than the stupidly beautiful face of his idol.

Then, Victor clears his throat. “So, I actually wanted to ask, Yuuri, about the woman you arrived with.”

“Yuuko?” Yuuri asks, lifting his head from the table for the first time in many minutes. He’s bewildered– _how would Victor Nikiforov know about Yuuko? Unless he was paying attention to Yuuri, but no that’s too presumptuous why would he look at Yuuri at all ever?_

“Is that her name? I wasn’t aware of it.” Victor says lightly, a note of something plastic in his voice.

“Yuuko Nishigori.” Yuuri confirms, mind racing. “I’ve known her ever since I was little, we skated at the same rink until my Senior debut, when I moved to Detroit.” _Why do you care? Why do you want to know?_

“So you skated together? How nice! And now, what–” the door to the coffeeshop opens, and Yuuko herself sweeps in, glowing with a cheerfulness that immediately brightens the room.

She catches sight of Yuuri and Phichit first, and her expression promises some amount of mischief to Yuuri. She’s definitely planned something with her husband and children– something that will undoubtedly embarrass Yuuri. He can only hope that it’s for his return to Japan, in a very private setting.

Then, Yuuri can see the precise moment when Yuuko sees the silver-blond head across the table from him. She was Victor’s fan before Yuuri ever was, after all. Her eyes widen, and she bounces a little with excitement. She rushes over, dodging another patron of the shop on her way to the table.

She completely ignores Yuuri and Phichit, dropping all sense of decorum to shake Victor’s hand. To his credit, he only looks a little bit shocked at her enthusiasm, his expression quickly smoothing over into a media-perfect smile. Not the broad one he offered Yuuri just a handful of minutes ago, but the one that he wears to interviews.

“Victor Nikiforov, I’m such a fan. I can’t believe I’m actually meeting you– would you sign some things for me?”

While Victor does that, Yuuko pulling things out of her handbag and placing them on the table for Victor to autograph, Phichit leans over to Yuuri.

“Huh, this feels familiar. Wonder where she got her fangirling tendencies from?”

Yuuri elbows him in the stomach.

…

Victor did not expect Yuuri Katsuki to be that cute. His little embarrassed squeaks whenever Victor tries to talk to him are adorable, and the way he mumbled into the table was rather endearing.

He also did not expect the woman– Yuuko?– to be quite so enthusiastic. He’s already signed one letter-sized poster for her, but now she’s rooting around in her bag for something else. He glances at Yuuri, who is currently whispering to Phichit, while she pulls three identical photos of him out of her bag.

“Do you need me to sign all three of these separately?” He asks her carefully. Maybe she’s afraid of losing one? Or, more likely, she’s going to sell two of them and keep one.

Victor’s opinion of her plummets.

“If you would.” She says, coloring slightly in the cheeks, though she is unafraid to meet his eyes. A fan, but clearly a bold and high-functioning one.

“Yuuko, come on, you already got your own, you don’t need to get–” Yuuri’s voice nearly startles Victor into messing up his own signature. It’s more bold with this woman than it had been in the entire preceding conversation, rivaling the voice from Victor’s alcohol-soaked memories.

“Yes, I do. It’s only polite to bring gifts for _all_ your family members when you’ve been out traveling.” The woman breaks eye contact with Victor to glare at Yuuri, who lifts both hands in surrender and lets her be.

“Alright, alright, you win. I’m going to get myself some coffee.” Yuuri says, standing up.

The woman nods, then asks– practically orders, really– “Bring me a latte, won’t you?”

Victor nearly frowns. Yuuri didn’t deserve to be treated like some servant– he deserved to be exalted, like a god, in a desperate attempt by mere mortals to keep him on earth.

Yuuri doesn’t protest, just nods and walks towards the counter. Victor finishes signing the pictures, and Yuuko carefully puts all of them back into her bag. Meanwhile, Victor’s head unconsciously turns towards the front of the shop, where the barista is rightfully very distracted by Yuuri walking up.

He can’t hear the conversation from here, but it looks like Yuuri is shyly putting in an order and the barista is hardly listening, eyes practically sparkling as she looks at Yuuri. Victor sympathizes with her.

Yuuri hands over some money, and the barista hastily turns away to make the coffee. She slams into something as she turns around, a shelf of materials rattling dangerously.

An unopened bag of pastry flour, kept precariously on the high shelf, lists alarmingly to one side. Victor rises halfway out of his seat with a shout, but Yuuri clearly noticed it as well. He lunges over the counter, grabbing the back of her shirt, and pulls. She practically flies out of the way, into the counter. The flour bag falls, slicing through the air mere centimeters from where her head was just moments previously.

The sound of the impact silences the whole shop.

Then, a low voice undercuts the stillness, murmuring like a mountain creek. Yuuri is speaking to the barista in soothing tones, words inaudible but intent clear– to reassure and gauge whether or not she is hurt.

Victor stands up and starts towards Yuuri, who has vaulted over the counter to let the barista cling to his shirt. As he gets closer, Victor can see that she’s young, barely in her twenties, if that, and shaking like a leaf. Yuuri is rubbing one hand on her back, still quietly saying things.

Eventually, the manager comes out, takes one look at her barista, and disappears for ice. The barista pulls up the hem of her shirt, hip already bruising a dark purple. Victor suspects she hit the same place twice– once when she knocked into the shelf, and once when Yuuri pulled her into the counter to get her out of the way.

“Here, let’s get her to a seat,” Victor says quietly. Yuuri nods, then gently urges the woman around the counter into one of the chairs. The manager returns, sitting next to the barista and holding a piece of ice to her hip gently.

“Now, are you alright, Yuuri?” Victor asks, turning his attention to the hero of the hour.

Yuuri nods rapidly, saying, “I’m fine, don’t worry.” His eyes rove around the shop, looking anywhere but directly at Victor.

“Oh!” Yuuri exclaims. “We should probably put that back.” Yuuri points at the bag of flour, miraculously still in one piece, sitting on the ground. It’s a sizeable bag, one of the ones that weighs fifty pounds at least.

Yuuri walks around the counter, bends over to pick up the bag, and then hoists it above his head to slot it onto the shelf.

In other words, Victor is greeted with the sight of dark jeans stretching across a round butt as he rounds the counter. The sweater swallows the width of Yuuri’s arms, but the way fifty pounds is lifted from the ground to above his head with absolutely no visible effort… Victor is so screwed. And the way the soft fabric stretches as Yuuri reaches up on his toes to get the bag on the shelf, revealing a strip of strong torso…

Victor is weak, and he has to grab the edge of the counter to steady himself. A thousand thoughts, once-buried by time and realism, come flooding back. The ease with which Yuuri lifted that bag of flour forces Victor to studiously _not_ think of what _else_ Yuuri could easily lift.

Phichit lightly taps his hand, which Victor hasn’t even realized that he’d stretched out towards Yuuri.

Victor tears his gaze away, and Phichit jerks his head to the side. The woman that came with Yuuri is crouching next to the barista, keeping a reassuring grip on her shaking hands. 

Oh. Of course. Victor had practically forgotten about the woman. Even now, he could see the easy familiarity between the two that Victor could never hope to achieve.

Even now, after the barista stopped shaking, Yuuko stands and slings an arm around Yuuri’s waist, pulling him into a casual, one-armed hug. She looks up and says something to him, and his cheeks tint pink and he grins. 

Victor feels a balloon of emotion expand in his chest with that smile.

He did not want. He should not want. Yuuri was not someone that was available, especially not for someone like Victor.

Oh, but he _did_ want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was... meant to be a sweet, short story about Yuuri being way stronger than he looks. It is definitely not that, at all. That original concept has been lost to the void. I headcanon Victor's strength kink, as if it wasn't clear enough already.
> 
> Also, my chapter concept got screwed up, so it's gonna be a while before the next one comes out. sorry y'all.
> 
> next time: worlds


	10. The World Figure Skating Championships

After that first night, Yuuri tries to stay in his own room. It is hardly conducive to a good night’s sleep, and he can catch Phichit sending him worried glances when he wakes up groggily, the shadows under his eyes darkening with each passing day.

He doesn’t see Victor Nikiforov again after that disastrous first day, either. Oh, sure, he passes him in hallways, and they greet each other cordially, but there is never another time when they’ve spent time together outside of the rink. 

Yuuri must have done something wrong; that’s why Victor isn’t speaking to him.

(He doesn’t think about the fact that he hasn’t gone out since that first day, too sick with anxiety and too busy practicing otherwise.)

One day before the short program, Yuuri steps off the ice in the midafternoon, Celestino having kicked him out of the rink early, saying that “you’re going to wear yourself out before the competition even begins.”

So Yuuri sits up in the bleachers, and watches the other competitors.

Every single one is amazing– of course they are, they’re at the _World Championships_. Yuuri can’t help but compare them to himself– this person’s quad loop is smoother than his, that person is practicing quad lutzes, this person’s Salchows get so much height, that person is _Victor Nikiforov._

He doesn’t even realize that his breathing is verging on hyperventilation until someone sits themself down on the seat next to him, their breathing half as hurried as his own.

Yuuri matches his breaths to theirs, and eventually calms and turns a shaky smile on that person.

Yuuko smiles back, genuinely, with a lopsided curl of her lips that screams of a nefarious plan.

“That’s more like it, Yuuri.” She pulls him gently to his feet. “Stop watching the other people– you’ll just stress yourself more. Let’s go do something else.”

Yuuko had been largely absent in the past two days, disappearing for the majority of the time while Yuuri practices and frets about a thousand and one things.

He’s not worried about her– Yuuko can take care of herself, and anybody who tries to attack her will be in for a nasty surprise. Yuuri didn’t just take ballet and ice skating with her, after all.

But today, she’s here, and she drags Yuuri shopping, of all things.

She buys him a raspberry sorbet– dairy doesn’t agree with him on the best of days– and chatters aimlessly at him. It feels… mundane.

She also buys what feels like an entire paycheck’s worth of packaged snacks and clothing, and makes Yuuri carry all of it.

By the time the sun sets, Yuuri feels absolutely exhausted, more than if Celestino had had him skating this entire time. He doesn’t know if it’s because shopping is a rather strenuous activity, or because spending hours with Yuuko had drained the tension that had been his sole source of energy in the past week.

All of a sudden, all the missed hours of sleep from the past week slam into him, leaving him staggering. He nearly stumbles into the street, but Yuuko grabs his arm and pulls him back up onto the curb.

They get dinner together, Yuuko checking her phone at every opportunity and Yuuri too tired to call her out on it. She’d tell him if it were important or relevant, and the gradual release of anxiety, if only for an afternoon, had left him drowsy and half-asleep.

Yuuko tells him later that, though his eyes were practically closed, he’d subconsciously managed to shovel enough food into his mouth to make his nutritionist cry. Though he insists on carrying all the bags– they weren’t heavy, just unwieldy– Yuuko is the one who guides them back to the hotel. 

He carries the bags to her room and falls almost immediately asleep. It is hardly past seven in the evening.

…

Yuuko takes a shower as soon as they get to the hotel. In the fifteen minutes that it takes for her to do so, Yuuri had left all the bags around her suitcase and collapsed into her bed, fast asleep.

She spends a moment to coo at the adorable sight, then gets to work gently pulling the blankets out from under his body to tuck him in.

After he’s covered by the blankets, she grabs the bags of snacks and heads out of the hotel room.

She takes the elevator two floors up, then walks down the hall and raps at a door.

Voices sound through the door, and eventually, a man opens it.

Yuuko smiles and holds up the bag. “I bought sweets for the kids.”

Takeshi pulls her in for a kiss, and she can feel the bags getting tugged out of her hands. She breaks away from him and says, “Loop, you better not be trying to take that bag without permission.”

Though her view of the hotel room is blocked by Takeshi’s body, she can hear the whisper of “how does she _always_ know?” and can imagine the pout on Loop’s face.

Her husband steps aside and lets her into the hotel room. She is swarmed by her children, who cover her in hugs that are absolutely just to get to the candy.

“You can’t eat all of them now, okay girls? Some of them are for when you watch the short programs tomorrow.” Yuuko chides gently.

Three identical faces nod solemnly at her. The first day they were here, the triplets had spent the whole day sleeping off the jet lag. The second, Yuuko spent whipping them back into shape, because Takeshi was entirely helpless to the combined power of the puppy-dog-eyes of his three children. They’d been spoiled in the weeks that she’d been away.

She upends the bag and Loop immediately lunges for the pile of snacks. She and Lutz reach for a chocolate bar at the same time, and glare menacingly at each other. Axel quietly picks up an identical chocolate bar from the other side of the pile and slips it into her pajama pants.

Yuuko wonders when they’ll realize that there’s a third chocolate bar in the pile. 

An arm wraps around her waist, and a low voice murmurs in her ear, “Will you be staying with us tonight?”

She turns her head and plants a kiss on his cheek. “No, Yuuri’s passed out in my room and, if I’m not there, he’s almost certainly going to wake up at midnight and worry himself to exhaustion again.”

Yuuko feels the skin under her lips tug downwards as her husband frowns, but he nods and relinquishes her. 

“I will stay here until we need to sleep though. Yuuri seems pretty out of it– he’ll sleep for another four hours, at least, before he starts fretting.” She says, louder, and the triplets cheer.

“Hey, mom, guess what happened at school the other day?” Loop offers.

Yuuko gives her a patented Mom Glare.

“It’s not anything bad!” Lutz protests.

“Promise!” Axel adds.

Yuuko settles in to hear the story, reserving her judgement.

…

It’s past midnight before Yuuko gets back to her room. Her triplets went to bed reluctantly at nine, and then Takeshi and Yuuko just spent some time together until he, too, could barely keep his eyes open. Clearly, Yuuko had to leave him with the kids by himself a little more– he’s obviously not used to having all three of them bother him at the same time.

Luckily, Yuuri is still asleep when she opens the door, apparently not having moved an inch since she left. His phone screen lights up just as she’s pulling back the covers on her half of the bed.

The most recent message from Phichit is one of dozens.

**Phichit Chulanont**  
YUURI IF YOU DON’T RESPOND WITHIN THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES I’M CALLING THE POLICE.

Yuuko picks up the phone and walks to the balcony of the hotel room, where Yuuri won’t be disturbed. She unlocks it– the password is Vicchan’s birthday, still, even after this many years– and dials Phichit.

“YUURI! WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU? WHY DIDN’T YOU PICK UP SOONER?” Phichit’s voice screams through the speaker, audible from several feet away. The accent, normally completely hidden behind an American one, rears its head and flattens the consonants.

“Yuuri’s been asleep since about seven this evening, Phichit-kun.” Yuuko says softly. “He’s in my room right now– since he doesn’t look like he’s getting enough sleep, I’m having him stay here.”

There is a long silence. Then, Phichit speaks again, at a much more reasonable volume.

“Yuuko?”

She can’t help but smile. “Yes, this is Yuuko.”

“He’s going to be sleeping in your room?”

“Yes.”

“Just sleeping?”

“Just sleeping.”

“Okay.” He hesitates, taking a deep breath, then says, “Okay, just making sure, because you know he has to skate tomorrow, and it’s really not a good idea–”

Yuuko’s smirk grows across her face until her cheeks hurt. This was entirely too fun. “I know he has to skate tomorrow!” She says, feigning innocence. “Which is why I want him to get a _good_ night’s sleep.” Though he cannot see her, she wiggles her eyebrows.

Phichit is silent again, and Yuuko can’t help but cover the receiver with one hand and snicker.

“Anyways, I just wanted to tell you where Yuuri is and that he’s going to be fine and well-rested for tomorrow. What time does he have to be up?”

She can nearly imagine the expression on the boy’s face. Eventually, he manages to squeak out a number, and then hangs up immediately afterward.

Yuuko gets rid of all the notifications on the phone, then puts it back on the nightstand and crawls into her bed.

Yuuri doesn’t even shift when she lies down, her weight slight and his slumber deep. She wraps one hand loosely over his waist, in case he needs it, and falls asleep.

…

Yuuri wakes up feeling… good. He wakes up and feels light, as if the atmosphere itself was pushing down less on him. He’s comfortable, and warm, and when he looks at the digital clock, he can see that it’s nearly eight in the morning.

Then, he notices an arm around him, and his brain helpfully recognizes the presence at his back as Yuuko before panic can set in.

He rolls off the bed, out from under Yuuko’s arm, and she wakes, blinking sleepily at him. 

“Good morning, Yuuko,” Yuuri says, inexplicably cheerful.

Yuuko rolls onto her stomach, into the warm indent where Yuuri had just been. “G’morning, Yuuri,” she mumbles into the pillow.

Yuuri laughs, then walks to his own room to shower.

Phichit isn’t up yet– when he’s not jet lagged, he’s the opposite of a morning person– so Yuuri just grabs some clothes and takes a warm shower. No matter how hot these hotel showers go, they will never hold up to the temperature of the onsen where he grew up.

Nevertheless, the heat feels nice, and Yuuri steps out of the shower loose-limbed and relaxed.

And then he unlocks his phone. The date, sitting innocuously in the corner of his screen, seems to blare out, brighter than any other application.

His good mood evaporates, and Yuuri feels vaguely nauseous. He can almost hear his back crack as he stiffens, suddenly, from the torrent of ice travels down his spine, clawing at his lungs, gripping his heart, settling in his stomach.

It’s the _World Championships_. The competition that Yuuri didn’t deserve to go to, the competition that is happening today. It was nothing more than a fluke that the ISU asked him to be here. Why he was here instead of the multitude of more experienced people that the JSF undoubtedly had was beyond him.

Yuuri’s knees buckle, and he sits against his bed, hand over his mouth, and just tries to breathe. Each inhale rasps against his throat– too shallow, too fast, and he tries to keep it quiet and not wake Phichit.

People have told him that regulating breathing is the fastest way to calm down, and multiple people have suggested that he count to seven.

Yuuri does not count to seven. He just imagines Yuuko, beside him, and breathes with her.

…

**IceLife**  
Get ready for the World Figure Skating Championships! In a shocking (but not necessarily unforeseen) turn of events, the Japanese Skating Federation has selected Yuuri Katsuki as their representative for the competition, instead of the more experienced Oda that they chose for the years previous.

> **221bbbaker**  
>  Ooh, can’t wait to see what this is gonna bring! Drama in Japan? Oda hasn’t won Worlds or anything in the past few years, but he’s definitely consistently in the top twenty...

**SkateCentral**  
The World Figure Skating Championships kick off TODAY! Don’t miss the much-anticipated showdown between Yuuri Katsuki and Victor Nikiforov– will the defending champion reclaim his record? Or will Katsuki break his streak of pure gold?

>  **viknikownsme**  
>  Y’all, this ain’t even a question. Katsuki did good in ONE event– it was a good day, or a fluke. My predictions are that its gonna be like the past few years– Victor, then Chris, then maybe JJ or that one Chinese skater with the quads. Katsuki’s gonna flunk.
> 
> **chris-giASScometti**  
>  Why do these headlines keep ignoring the silver medalist from the past TWO years in a row?? In any other era, Christophe would be gliding on gold. It’s just Victor Nikiforov that’s inhuman.
> 
> **CowalskyAnalysis**  
>  The data predicts that Katsuki isn’t gonna do great. Minor competitions, he does fine, but at the larger international ones, he chokes.
>
>> **rogers,gol.d**  
>  **@CowalskyAnalysis** I agree. I’ve linked some metas (here, here, and here), and while everyone knows about his skate in Canada by now, he’s done almost as well at some Team Trophy events and the local tournaments. If you check the last link, you can see that his skates at his ice shows/exhibitions outside of comps are literally PHENOMENAL. Easily record-breaking if they were to be given points. That said, you can see him do the same programs (side-by-side video here) at actual comps and he just flubs. every. single. time.
> 
>  **firetigermelon3**  
>  Rooting for #yuurikatsuki but knowing in my heart that its gonna be Victor at the top of the podium.
>
>>  **forthe4ce**  
>  AND CHRIS RIGHT NEXT TO HIM PLEASE DON’T FORGET CHRISTOPHE
> 
>  **JJGuuuurls**  
>  King JJ Will Make It To The Podium This Time, I Believe In Him!
>
>>  **angelicA**  
>  **@JJGuuuurls** by Fall Out Boy

…

Celestino doesn’t quite know what to do. He consults constantly with nutritionists to make sure that his skaters have energy and fuel for the competition day, and, the day of, he tries his best to make sure that they don’t overeat and vomit on the ice.

Usually, he succeeds.

But Yuuri Katsuki has the opposite problem. He doesn’t seem to want to be eating. Celestino sits across the table from his two international level skaters, one steadily chewing through his breakfast, and the other blank-faced and eating only when prompted or nudged. Celestino can count the number of bites that Yuuri has taken of his food on his hands. Nothing he says really seems to be getting through to him, and he’s concerned, to say the least.

To make matters worse, Yuuri’s miracle girlfriend was nowhere to be found.

Eventually, the time demands that they leave the dining hall, Yuuri’s plate still half-uneaten despite cajoling from both Phichit and Celestino.

Luckily, Yuuri’s warm-up lap isn’t shaky at all, which means there is definitely still some fuel in his system. For the first time in his career as a skater and a coach, Celestino hopes that he’s ignored the nutritionist for dinner the day before and carb-loaded. Otherwise, Yuuri’s stamina will fail him.

And then Yuuri falls. Celestino can only watch helplessly, leaning on the boards, as Yuuri comes out of a spin to approach a jump, looks around wildly, and takes off awkwardly, the axis of rotation wildly off center.

Though he cannot hear Yuuri, the sound of the stadium and the music drowning out the sounds from the ice, he can see Yuuri’s mouth moving as he curses and pulls himself back up. He can also see the pitying and slightly confused expressions from the other skaters, many of whom can be presumed to only know Yuuri from that one amazing free skate.

In the weeks leading up to Worlds, Celestino had gotten used to Yuuri adding jumps and spins to hike up his technical score during practice. But today, with a certain auburn head conspicuously absent from the rink, Yuuri had reverted to his original program.

It looks terribly simple now, long stretches of empty space where there were once perfectly-timed steps and turns. And yet, Yuuri seems to have less time than he used to. He rushes to get to each element, never truly getting into the rhythm.

He doesn’t get a clean run-through before the practice time is over, and Celestino can’t even go to the back and help him– Phichit is skating second.

He watches Yuuri disappear, shoulders hunched under a big jacket that still hides his costume.

What more can he do?

…

Yuuri sneaks into the waiting lobby, a formless shadow with his training jacket firmly zipped to his chin. Of course, Victor notices him anyways– his hair has been pushed back and his glasses discarded. He’s squinting slightly, arms wrapped around his middle. Victor wants to pull him into his arms and hold him tight, and he wrenches his gaze away.

_Not available_ , he reminds himself crossly.

Still, as Yuuri pulls out some headphones and faces a wall, Victor cannot help but think he looks so small, and that there is nothing he wants more than to help him.

Victor is skating just after Yuuri, so he won’t be able to see his score before he skates.

There is a commotion outside the room, and multiple people, Victor himself included, stop what they’re doing to look at the door.

It opens slightly, the back of an ISU jacket visible. It sounds like someone is trying to get permission to be in the rink with the skaters– a fool’s errand, really. Only skaters and coaches are allowed back here, with the rare, trusted reporter.

Out of the corner of his eye, Victor catches movement, and he turns to see Yuuri unfolding himself from the wall to head towards the door.

There are only a few words exchanged with the official, but he almost immediately steps aside to let whoever was arguing with him in.

Of course it was the fairy-woman.

She pushes past the door-guard to launch herself at Yuuri, wrapping her arms around his neck. Yuuri tries valiantly to stand, but he stumbles and they go down in a mass of limbs. Victor isn’t the only one that looks away.

A voice grumbles to his right, “How come he can have his girlfriend with him but I can’t?” It’s that Canadian skater, the one with the undercut and the flamboyant posing.

What was his name? It was–

“JJ, just accept that the ISU likes him better, eh?” Chris says cheerfully, swinging an arm around his neck.

JJ scowls, but doesn’t refute the statement.

“I have to go next, anyways,” he dismisses, pulling away from Chris and walking out. Victor doesn’t quite understand his grousing; everyone knows that his girlfriend would definitely be in the stands, as close as possible to JJ, and he’d see her immediately before and after he skates.

He tries not to look at Yuuri, who’s sporting an easy smile with the woman practically in his lap.

He tries not to look at their interlocked hands when they leave together.

…

Victor waits at the rinkside while Chris skates. Yuuri, right next to him, is twisting his hands anxiously. Victor had come out halfway through Chris’s program, almost at the same instant that a short auburn head had walked away from Yuuri towards Cialdini.

Chris’s face is flushed, with more than just exertion, Victor reckons. Still, he receives thunderous applause when the program is over, a shower of roses dotting the ice. Chris catches his breath, sitting on the ice, then takes a victory lap.

Yuuri is still wearing his black warmup jacket. On an impulse, Victor reaches for the zipper and drags it down, revealing a muted purple costume. There are darker, more saturated lines breaking the shape, curling around his arms and waist and down his legs. 

As soon as Victor touches his jacket, Yuuri freezes. Victor thinks he might even be holding his breath. There is a mild flush to Yuuri’s cheeks, but it is stark against the fear-pale skin of the rest of his face. 

Victor hates how washed-out he looks. Yuuri deserves to _glow_ with life, not be sapped by anxiety. He grabs Yuuri’s hands, which are limp at his sides, and stares directly into his eyes. They are almost void of color– dilated pupils swallowing the warm brown iris.

Victor leans in and murmurs, “Good luck.” 

Some of that paleness is chased away by a blush, which spreads across the rest of his cheeks. Even the skin that is untouched by the blush seems to be less ash-colored. Yuuri whispers “thank you,” then hurries to his coach’s side.

They exchange a few terse words, and then Cialdini pulls his skater into a hug. A pat on the back pushes Yuuri onto the ice, and he nearly stumbles.

He takes a cursory lap around the ice, waving shyly to the spectators, as was customary. Victor’s heart goes out to Yuuri– his smile was so small and so plastic, doing just the bare minimum to hide the anxiety that racks his frame. He spirals towards the center.

Yuuri isn’t quite in the middle of the ice before the fairy-woman, Yuuko, shrieks something in Japanese at Yuuri from next to Cialdini. From where Victor is standing, he couldn’t even see her behind the coach.

He spins around and squints in her direction, confusion painted across his features. The woman shouts it to him again, and there isn’t even a breath before Yuuri’s yelling something back, louder than what his soft voice seems capable of.

At that moment, something changes. His back straightens, his shoulders fall, and his blades steady. Yuuri turns towards the judges, in the precise center of the rink, and goes utterly still. The crowd seems to sense the change as well, an immediate hush falling across the stands.

The music starts, and Victor cannot breathe. 

There is no air in the stadium, no space in his lungs. Every molecule in the air is drawn towards the ice, towards the figure at the center.

Victor sees now that he was completely wrong in calling Yuuko the fairy. Because there must be something magic in the way Yuuri jumps, in the arcs that he draws with his skates, in the rhythm between his steps and the music. The lines of his costume break away in fluttering segments, an illusion of shimmering dust in every arc of his arms. He’s ethereal, flying with wings that cannot exist in the reality that Victor knows.

The music isn’t being played through the speakers– it is dancing through the stands, curling around every member of the audience on its journey towards the rink. It swirls around Yuuri, flowing between his arms and around his legs and through his skates into the ice. 

Later, Victor would struggle to recall a single technical element of Yuuri’s skate. The only things he would be able to tell you would be the impression, the emotion, the feeling of the skate. He would not be able to recall a single concrete detail.

Except for Yuuri’s smile.

Beatific, it is directed not up, towards the sky, nor up towards the audience. It is hardly even rink-level, for any person watching. That smile, though on a face with the chin lifted high, is directed towards the ice.

Victor’s first love was the ice. And apparently, so too was Yuuri’s.

There’s something extraordinarily transient about the whole program– something that could not be replicated or contained, something for which videos could not do justice. It is something that had to be experienced in person, at this specific moment in time. 

It feels like there isn’t even time to draw breath before Yuuri spins into a final pose and the music stops. 

There is a moment of silence as the entire arena struggles to process what had just happened. Victor feels lightheaded.

Then, Yuuri ducks his head shyly into a bow. The spell breaks, and the world explodes.

The only other instance where an audience has come close to being this loud was for Victor himself, when he had broken his own short program record at the Olympics. And now, Victor is cheering for Yuuri, blatantly ignoring the fact that he doesn’t have the air in his lungs to spare.

Yuuri seems mildly shellshocked, and does his bowing to the audience with a stunned expression on his face.

“You’re up next.” Victor nearly jumps a foot in the air when that familiar voice sounds in his ear. But Yakov seems to be missing his signature cranky growl– he’s hardly even looking at Victor, eyes still fixed upon the figure on the ice, now picking up flowers and teddy bears.

Victor can’t blame him, because he’s doing the same.

…

**viknikownsme**  
EXCUSE ME WHAT THE FUKC YUURI KATSUKI, SIR, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

**iceicebabyy**  
Y’ALL I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE OF BEING IN THE ARENA WHERE WORLDS IS HAPPENING AND I STILL CAN’T BREATHE. I DON’T HAVE ASTHMA BUT THIS IS LITERALLY BREATHTAKING.

**austriasbae**  
AW NO i missed the broadcast!! Someone send me the vid pLEASE!

> **10to21jackal**  
>  **@austriasbae** Not to be mean but the video aint gonna do SHIT for this program you had to have been here it’s a TRANSCENDENT experience. i say “i can die happy now” a lot but this time I MEAN IT.

…

At the last second, Victor changes a triple Salchow to a quad, and a quadruple toe loop to his signature flip. Though he still feels mildly breathless, there is something in the air that makes him feel lighter, as if the music itself wants to buoy him up into doing the impossible.

He makes his way to the kiss and cry feeling pleased with himself– Yakov even managed a gruff “congratulations” when he got off, which meant that he’d done extraordinarily well.

They sit, and wait, and Victor watches the highlights of his own program. Though his jumps are good– they always have been, Victor feels like his artistic score will also be high. There was something that inspired him after the Grand Prix Final, and he’d be damned to let that inspiration go to waste.

And then the number comes out. Yakov wraps an arm around him and cheers. Victor grins with reckless abandon, and the announcer declares his score and the fact that he is now in first place.

The screen displays a number that is ten full points better than the previous world record, set by Victor himself at the last Olympics. Even though he loves a good bit of competition, Victor likes winning even more, and breaking his own record by such a huge margin is surely enough to cinch his win–

The screen changes to display the rankings.

In first place, with the new world record, is Victor Nikiforov. Of course.

But right under the stripes of the Russian flag is a white flag with a red dot. The name next to the flag: Yuuri Katsuki.

There are less than four points between them.

A record that had stood for over a year had been broken not once, but twice within the same competition– within the same hour, even.

“Congratulations!” Victor hears, and his head snaps up to meet dark brown eyes.

Yuuri Katsuki stands just outside the kiss and cry, twin spots of bright red on his cheeks, but he is clapping enthusiastically. For Victor. He looks much better– excitement brightening his eyes and the shock and paleness of his cheeks chased away. He’s covered his costume with his black jacket again, and his big blue glasses are back on his nose. He’s also on the wrong side of the barriers, as if he’s part of the audience. 

Victor can’t help but grin, and offers Yuuri some applause of his own. “You too!”

“ _Omedetou Katsuki Yuuri!_ ” A high-pitched voice shrieks, and a tiny brown blur is launched towards Yuuri’s chest.

He catches it with ease, and Victor’s stomach drops when he identifies it as a child.

It’s an adorable child, not even of school age, with terrifyingly familiar auburn-brown hair.

Victor abruptly stands up to leave the kiss and cry, while the Chinese skater begins his program. Victor doesn’t pay much attention, though he probably should. The Chinese boy, though young, probably jumps better quads than even he does. But there is a burning curiosity in his throat now, one that wants to know everything about Yuuri.

_I just want to get to know him. As a friend._

He ignores the solid ball in his stomach at the sight of Yuuri, who is so very comfortable with this child. Victor doesn’t know anyone who would be prepared to catch a flying preschooler, unless they were used to it.

The only hope he can cling to is the fact that Yuuri introduced the woman as Yuuko Nishigori, not Katsuki. Deep in his heart, he knows it’s a lost cause. There are a dozen reasons why she could have a different name– clinging to this tenuous hope would only lead to a more difficult rejection later. But this hope is all that he has, so he holds on with an iron grip.

“ _Victor Nikiforov?_ ” At his name, Victor is pulled out of his thoughts, and nearly has a heart attack.

In the time that it took him to collect his thoughts, the child in Yuuri’s arms had multiplied. Now, there are two– the first one still hugging his neck, the other pointing incredulously at Victor.

Victor’s hands clutch at the gate of the kiss and cry, his mouth working soundlessly as he tries to figure out what to say.

“I’m so sorry, let me get out of your way,” Yuuri begins, shifting both children higher on his hips. “These two are–”

“Axel! Lutz! You can’t run off like that!”

Yuuko Nishigori rounds the corner, a _third_ identical child in her arms. 

Victor feels faint. 

“Mama, it’s Victor Nikiforov!” One of the children in Yuuri’s arms says excitedly.

“Pleased to meet you…” Victor tries, a smile pasting itself across his face. From the worried furrow in Yuuri’s brow at his expression, he doesn’t quite think he pulls it off.

“Oh, how rude of me. This is Loop,” Yuuko says, bouncing the girl in her arms, “and those two that _can’t follow instructions_ are Axel and Lutz.”

“Like… the skating jumps?” Victor asks.

“For the record, I didn’t choose the names.” Yuuri says, laughing.

_Of course someone married to a skater of Yuuri’s caliber would name their children after the skating jumps._

Victor swallows the churning in his stomach, and says, “It’s lovely to meet you, Axel, Lutz, and Loop.” 

The three wave happily, and chorus, “Nice to meet you, Victor Nikiforov!”

“Excuse me, I have to go.” Victor excuses himself hastily, something vile clawing its way up his throat.

He turns away, and doesn’t see the hands that the triplets put up– a wordless high five.

...

“That was kind of rude,” Loop complains.

“Yeah, what’s his deal?” A voice rumbles next to Yuuri’s ear, and he turns to make eye contact with Takeshi Nishigori. _When did he get here?_

“I’m sure he’s busy– they’ll want to interview him about the record, I expect.” Yuuri says, handing Lutz over to her father. Axel doesn’t let go of his neck.

“The record that you broke just before he did?” Yuuko asks, raising her eyebrows.

Yuuri ducks his head bashfully. “Yeah… I, uh, might be hiding from the reporters.”

“Yuuri!” Yuuko swats his arm, Loop securely tucked against her hip. “Go do your interviews, you anxious child.”

Yuuri shakes his head. He’d rather do _anything else_ than deal with the press. The reporters are pushy, there’s no space, and there’s always the thought in the back of his mind that people will be watching his every word.

So he stalls.

“First, what are you guys doing here?” Yuuri asks Takeshi and the triplets. “I thought you said you’d be watching at home?”

“But Victor Nikiforov!” Lutz exclaims.

“And we wanted to see Yuuri Katsuki skate!” Axel says, practically into his neck.

“You did really good too, by the way.” Loop adds, as if it were an afterthought. Yuuri knows that she’s just doing it to mess with him– after so many stories, the triplets have been thoroughly disillusioned about what kind of person he is. But that means he’s subject to teasing, and Loop is the worst of the sisters.

“Okay, before we make you leave, can you just hold all three of the girls so we can take a picture?” Yuuko says, a curious light glinting in her eyes.

Yuuri has a feeling that he knows where Loop’s mischief comes from, and it isn’t Takeshi.

Yuuko gives Loop to her father, then quickly strips the jacket off of Yuuri. They get a few glances, though most people are still focused on the skater who is currently on the ice, ripping through jump after jump. If what Yuuri remembers is correct, he’s put a lot of quads right in the beginning of the program, and the back half will be the steps and the spins. He goes for the sheer volume of technical elements, executed perfectly, rather than musicality or performance. The audience loves it, though, cheering at a beautiful quadruple toe loop.

“Okay, Axel, hold on tight.” Takeshi says, then hands his daughters to Yuuri for the picture.

…

**has3tsuskate**  
[image: Yuuri Katsuki, in his purple short program costume, holding a set of triplets– one in each arm, and one clinging to his neck. They are all grinning wildly.]

**has3tsuskate** #yuurikatsuki broke nikiforov’s SP record, but of course, the prince of the ice took the title right back. Here’s to a good free skate! _Ganbatte Yuuri!_

**Comments have been turned off.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so yknow those fics that always describe "victor's heart-shaped smile"? I thought they were just using the anime as a reference and then describing too literally, and then i saw a video of aoi shouta. PEOPLE SMILE LIKE THAT IRL????
> 
> also, one of my pet peeves is when the characterization of side characters of twins/triplets is exactly the same. i headcanon: axel is quieter, more likely to support others' ideas and use her head. loop is mischievous, and will definitely do anything to get what she wants. lutz is demanding, and knows what she wants but will always try to get someone else to do it for her. they are not the same person. 
> 
> i'm gonna do my best to finish this fic in a timely manner, but there's a shit ton of things that I have to do between now and january of next year. someone save me.
> 
> next time: the free skate and the reveal (and reconciliation)


	11. Truth in Victory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title: Truth in Victuuri

The day dawns bright and clear, the skies blue and the air crisp. Victor ends up sitting on the steps outside of the rink, face tilted up and the sun warming his cheeks.

He should go inside– he should get some practice in before the competition officially resumes, but it’s so nice outside that he frankly could care less about etiquette. 

There’s a quiet scuff of shoes behind him, and Victor doesn’t bother to open his eyes. The rink is closed off right now to spectators, so it’s not a fangirl, which is all that he needs.

The person stops walking and carefully takes a seat next to Victor, an arms-length away. They don’t make a sound.

“It’s nice today, isn’t it?” Victor says finally, the silence grating on the otherwise perfect, soothing morning.

There’s a low sound of agreement, revealing nothing about the other person.

Victor opens one eye to look sidelong at the person next to him.

And then he flinches, overbalances, and falls off the side of the steps into the grass.

“Are you okay?” Yuuri Katsuki says, a worried furrow between his eyebrows as he peers across the steps at Victor.

“I’m fine, I just wasn’t expecting it to be you.” Victor says, feeling heat rush to his face that is entirely unrelated to the gentle sunshine.

Yuuri’s eyes drift down, and he retreats back to his side of the steps. “Oh. Sorry.”

Victor picks himself up off the grass and dusts himself off. “No, don’t apologize! You just surprised me.”

Yuuri looks at him, then, his eyes unfathomably dark behind his glasses. “Okay.” 

Victor nods. “Okay.”

And then the silence stretches.

“So…” Victor starts, “Are you ready for the free skate today?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I think.” Yuuri says, picking at the gravel bits at his feet. “How about you?”

His head snaps up, and he looks wide-eyed at Victor. “Not that I’m implying that you are ever not ready, or anything, of course not! I’m just, you know, returning a sentiment! I know you’re probably ready, of course you are, but–”

Victor can’t help but laugh. Yuuri was so adorable like this, hair ungelled and disheveled, eyes bright behind blue glasses, skin glowing from the gentle March sunlight. His cheeks are slightly reddened, and he gestures frantically while he tries to defend his question. 

Victor takes pity on him. “I’m hoping I’ll be able to steal my record back from you,” he teases gently. He winks at Yuuri, hoping that it will make his joke more obvious.

Luckily, it seems like Yuuri takes it the right way, flushing further but smiling broadly.

“Good luck,” he offers softly. “I’m sure you’ll be able to beat the record.”

Victor frowns. There was something there that he would love to unpack, but he doesn’t quite think that it will be a good thing right before practice at Worlds.

Victor changes the subject. “Now that I have you here, I was wondering, about yesterday…” Yuuri meets his unspoken question with a blank stare. “With the triplets?”

There is a pause, then a moment of realization and Yuuri groans and drops his face into his hands. “Yuuko didn’t tell me she was bringing her kids. They just showed up after I skated– I was as surprised as you were!” He says, slightly muffled by his hands.

 _There’s something strange about that…_  
“ _‘Her’_ kids?” Victor repeats.

Yuuri still isn’t looking at him, but he nods. “She got tickets for this event from my coach, so she flew her husband and their kids in. I kind of wish they didn’t come, because it’s different knowing that they’re watching at home versus watching in person and…”

Victor stops listening, his mind racing. _her_ husband _her husband Her Husband HER HUSBAND HER HUSBAND HER HUSBAND–_

“She’s married?” Victor shouts, suddenly on his feet.

Yuuri jumps a little, cutting himself off in the middle of his sentence. He looks up at Victor, squinting slightly against the sun. “Yeah, where did you think her kids came from?” he asks, a bit peevishly.

“She’s married.” Victor repeats, to himself this time. “She’s _married_.” He sinks to his knees in front of Yuuri.

A hand hesitantly reaches for Victor, hovering just above his forehead. “Victor, are you okay?” Yuuri asks, the sarcasm in his voice replaced with genuine concern. “Did you hit your head when you fell earlier?”

Victor envelops his hand with both of his own. “ _She’s married to another man?_ ” he asks fervently, locking eyes with a shocked Yuuri. 

He nods, his own gaze flitting between Victor’s teary ones and their interlocked hands. “His name is Takeshi Nishigori.” He offers quietly. 

Victor couldn’t give a _flying fuck_ what the husband’s name is, as long as it’s not Yuuri Katsuki.

“ _She’s not your girlfriend._ ” Victor says, filled with a kind of helpless wonder.

Yuuri’s eyes grow wide, and his mouth twists. “ _Yuuko?_ My _girlfriend_?” he sputters. “She’s practically my sister, I could have never thought of her that way!” He tugs his hand out of Victor’s so that he can cover his face again. 

Victor reaches for his wrists and pries off Yuuri’s hands from his own face. 

“Yuuri Katsuki, are you in a relationship right now?” He asks, very seriously.

His face, cherry red, grows brighter. “No, why– what– Victor –”

Victor Nikiforov kisses him. Just briefly, a soft meeting of warm lips.

It burns down his throat like expensive whiskey, smooth and warm.

Yuuri freezes, hand still held captive by Victor. His mouth is slightly parted, and his eyes wide in disbelief. 

“You– Victor Nikiforov, you–”

Victor, for some reason, flushes brilliantly and drops Yuuri’s hands. 

“Sorry, I just– that– I didn’t mean to–” Victor stammers out, as if it were his first kiss in grade school. He’s best friends with Christophe Giacometti– he shouldn’t be this flustered by a quick kiss.

“You kissed me.” Yuuri whispers, one hand touching his lips. “You _kissed me._ ”

Victor winces, and stands up. “Sorry, I–”

A hand grabs his wrist, and yanks him back down. Victor stumbles and falls on his butt on the step below Yuuri, bringing them eye-to-eye.

“Why did you kiss me?” Yuuri demands, voice tremulously high.

Victor opens his mouth, but is unable to find words that can quantify how he feels. How Yuuri _makes_ him feel. 

“Is this some cruel joke? Some punishment for taking your record?” Yuuri mumbles, half-incoherently. “Why would you kiss me?”

Victor brings his other hand up– the one not caught in a vice grip by Yuuri– and cups his cheek. 

“Because you’re amazing.” He says honestly.

Yuuri frowns at that, chewing at his lip. He opens his mouth, as if to deny it, and Victor has no choice but to kiss him again.

And this time, Yuuri kisses back.

It’s one long, glorious second of bliss before the doors to the arena slam open and Yuuri flinches away from Victor.

A janitor, with headphones on and a bag of trash, stands in the doorway, bobbing his head to whatever he’s listening to. 

It takes a scant moment for him to notice them, but he pushes one of the earphones back on his head with his free hand and says, “Are you two skaters? The mens’ warmup is starting in five, if you wanna go in and get ready.”

Victor nods his thanks, and begins to walk in. He makes it three steps before he realizes that Yuuri is just sitting on the steps, stock-still.

“C’mon Yuuri, we should go before our coaches have an aneurysm.” Victor says merrily, a wide grin stretching across his face. He feels rather giddy, warm and light and airy as though his head is filled with champagne bubbles. Retracing his steps, he offers a hand to Yuuri.

He takes it, and Victor pulls him up, interlacing their fingers.

He doesn’t look, but there is a moment of stillness before Yuuri squeezes his hand, and Victor knows that everything’s alright.

They walk into the building holding hands.

…

Yuuri shows up to the practice in a daze. Yuuko is in her position next to Celestino, and it’s obvious that there is something very distracted about his demeanor. He had walked in just before the practice was going to start, face flushed, and practically floated onto the ice.

He doesn’t look at the other skaters on the ice, not even Victor Nikiforov, who’d come in hardly half a minute before he had. He’s also not paying attention to what Celestino is telling him to do.

He runs his program, steps light and airy, but his jumps are just singles and doubles, hovering for an extraordinary amount of time over the ice. It looks as though he’s forgotten how to be aggressive in his jumps– forgotten how to whip his body around and launch into the air with poise and power.

His spins are looser, less tense, and Yuuko can’t figure out why. She knows what the program is supposed to be– realistic, grounded, aggressive, and Yuuri’s completely lost that feeling.

It looks like those rare times when he’d had a good day, had spent hours and hours on the ice, spinning and skating and jumping and never falling. It looks like the days when his love for the ice is pouring out of every limb, joy suffusing every gesture.

Yuuko knows for a fact that he’d not been skating, because the ice was flawless when she and Celestino arrived.

The practice time ends, and Celestino fixes Yuuri with a mildly displeased, confused expression. 

Yuuko interrupts him before he could ever begin speaking.

“What’s going on, Yuuri?”

A slow, ponderous blink. “Nothing bad at all, Yuuko, I promise.”

He smiles, then, eyes very slightly vacant. “I just… don’t want to wake up. It’s a nice dream.”

“Do you… think you’re asleep?” Yuuko asks incredulously.

“Well, something happened this morning that could only happen in my wildest dreams, and I just don’t want to have to wake up and know that it didn’t actually happen, you know?”

Celestino interjects, his voice edged in steel. “Yuuri Katsuki, are you high?”

Some of the mist in Yuuri’s eyes clears. “What? Of course not!” He protests.

Yuuko decides to take matters into her own hands. “Yuuri, could you come off the ice for me, please?” She asks sweetly.

Normally, at that tone of voice, Yuuri would pale and skate as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

Yuuko knows there’s something up when Yuuri just nods and complies, slipping on his skate guards and walking to where she’s standing.

She grabs his ear and twists it firmly, tugging him down so she can hiss into it.

“ _You’re. Not. Dreaming._ Now, if I find out that you’ve been using something, especially right before an international competition…” Yuuko threatens.

“Ow, ow, ow, sorry, okay, I swear I haven’t been doing drugs or anything of that sort I–” Yuuri squeaks, then suddenly goes completely silent.

“I just– I–” He stops struggling, and in her surprise Yuuko lets go of his ear. “Oh my god. I just–” Yuuri then flushes, from the top of his head down into his neckline.

“Oh my god Yuuko I have to tell you something.” He grabs her hand and starts tugging her away.

Yuuko looks over her shoulder and sees Celestino mouth _“Is he actually high?”_ at her, to which she shakes her head. As soon as she’d twisted his ear, there was a sharpening of cognitive function, and then a half-second later, a myriad of emotions that she couldn’t quite catch.

Yuuko lets Yuuri drag her into an abandoned hallway, where she pulls her hand out of his mostly-slack grip to cross her arms at him as though he were one of her children.

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on now?” she demands.

“Yuuko, I think I kissed Victor Nikiforov.” Yuuri’s eyes have lost their focus again, swallowed by the recollection of a memory. His hand creeps up to touch his lips. “Or, rather, I think he might have kissed me.”

Of all the things that he could have admitted to, Yuuko was least prepared for that.

“You _think?_ ” she screeches, far too loudly. “What do you mean, you _think_? Victor Nikiforov? _The_ Victor Nikiforov?”

“I thought I was dreaming!” Yuuri waves his arms frantically, trying to quiet her. “Everything was just, a little too perfect, you know?”

But Yuuko’s already moved past disbelief– both his and her own. 

She grabs his shoulders and shakes him. “When was this?”

“This morning, before we came into practice!”

“And what do you want from it?”

Yuuri blinks, bewildered. “What?”

“What do you want from Victor? To be his boyfriend? Skating tips? What do you want from him, now that you know he’s attracted to you?”

“I–” Yuuri begins, then stops and thinks, gnawing on his cheek. “I just– I want to be worthy of skating with him. I want to prove that I can be good enough.”

Privately, Yuuko thinks he’s proven plenty.

“Then, skate for _him_ , Yuuri. Your free skate is about your story, right?” A nod. “Then _tell him your story._ ”

…

That afternoon, Yuuko changes what she says to Yuuri before he gets on the ice.

“Skate for _him_ , Yuuri.”

Yuuri almost starts his customary response, but then he pauses and considers what she said. 

“I’ll do my best.” He says finally, then skates onto the ice.

His shoulders are still tense, and his back ramrod straight as he waves at the audience, elbows tucked in towards his body as if to shield him from their gaze.

“That wasn’t what you usually say to him.” Celestino rumbles at her side.

Yuuko shakes her head. “I hope he’ll be alright.”

…

 **SportsInternational**  
It’s the Second day of the World Figure Skating Championships! Open the link below for a complete list of skaters that made it to the free skate! Victor Nikiforov leads the pack, breaking his own Olympic record from last year!

> **katsukatsuDAMN**  
>  are we…….. not gonna talk about how the record was broken first by Yuuri Katsuki? No? Okay then.
> 
> **Fretzeldurmf**  
>  this is Yuuri Katsuki erasure and I will not stand for it.
> 
> **viknikownsme**  
>  ahhhhhhhh can’t wait for another gold for Victor! He’s done so well this season (and every season before!)

**MapleLeafFlag**  
The Short Program of the World Figure Skating Championships has just concluded, with Canada’s own Jean Jacques Leroy (King JJ) sitting in fifth– easily qualifying for the Free Skate!

>  **angelicA**  
>  yes, good job JJ! We and the rest of the JJ Girls are cheering for you!
> 
>  **iceicebabyy**  
>  Which fangirl on the Canada News editorial is writing about JJ Leroy when NIKIFOROV AND KATSUKI ARE ON THE SAME ICE??
>
>> **riseuplights**  
>  PREACH  
> 

...

Victor, as the person in first place after the short program, is skating last, after Yuuri Katsuki. As he stands in the wings, he can’t help but watch Yuuri step out on the ice, Yuuko having said her magic words to him.

Yet, his posture doesn’t relax, and there is no palpable shift in the air. Yuuri just looks nervous, and it pulls at Victor’s heart.

Then, he feels a physical tug, on the corner of his costume.

He looks down, and there is a small child, too short to be seen over the boards. She’s got one chubby hand latched on the hem of his shirt, and is looking innocently up at him.

She has auburn-brown hair.

_Where have I seen that before?_

“Are you lost?” Victor bends down to ask her kindly. “Do you need help finding your momma?” He hopes that, at the very least, the word “mama” would be universal enough to translate.

Very solemnly, the child shakes her head. In heavily accented, measured English, she says “Good luck.”

Victor feels a warm smile spread across his face. “Why thank you, little one–”

She tugs on his shirt again, insistently shaking her head. “Good luck” she repeats, one stubby finger pointed at the ice.

“What?”

“Good luck. Katsuki Yuuri.” She says urgently, pointing towards the rink. 

All of a sudden, Victor understands. “You want me to wish Yuuri luck?” He asks the girl.

“Good luck,” she says, nodding. Victor doubts she actually understood him, but the intent was clear. She lets go of his shirt, and he steps forward to call across the ice. 

“Good luck, Yuuri!”

Yuuri doesn’t seem to hear him, and he slowly spirals towards the middle of the ice. Victor feels a flash of panic. If Yuuri gets to the center, then it would not be proper to shout at him anymore, but Victor can’t just ignore the very sound advice of a toddler.

Another tug on his shirt. The girl had crept forward past the wall. She says firmly to him, “ _Ganbatte_.”

“ _Ganbatte_.” Victor repeats carefully.

The girl nods, then points at the ice, where Yuuri has almost reached the center. “ _Ganbatte, Katsuki Yuuri_ ,” she says.

Victor cups his hands around his mouth and, praying that this child didn’t teach him something immature, yells “ _Ganbatte_ Yuuri!”

It seems like Yuuri heard him, that time, because all of a sudden, dark eyes meet blue, and Victor is drowning.

The air, already cold, suddenly takes on an extraordinary crisp quality. Yuuri’s spine straightens, never breaking eye contact with Victor, and he nods once, sharply. His movements are all of a sudden assured, confident with the ease of long hours of practice.

Victor glances back at the girl, hoping to thank her, but she’s disappeared. He spins around, shocked, and then sees the girl sitting in a man’s arms. His face is the same shape as her’s, and she holds onto him with a familiarity that soothes Victor’s worry.

And then he sees the other one. Looking exactly the same, dressed in a different color, sitting in the father’s other arm.

And then a _third_ appears from behind his back. _Triplets._

Victor hardly has time to remember whose triplets they are before the music starts. Victor whirls back around, just in time to catch Yuuri’s eyes as they flick up from his opening stance.

There is no sense of lightness in this program. Where the short program was magical by every definition of the word, there is something unbearably gritty in this free skate. As Yuuri takes off, it’s as if he’s a gravity well–, the blue not a shower of crystals, but the glow of a supermassive star, threatening to collapse under its own weight.

Every eye is inexorably drawn in– every murmur silenced, every phone turned off.

There are no jumps in the first half of the program, which is dominated by a crescendo of steps and whirls. It looks like anxiety, distrust, pain. The tiny, tiny ball that Yuuri curls into for the spins is that of a shy, anxious child, desperate to succeed and terrified of failure. Those steps, so beautifully placed, paint the vivid, winding journey, of hope that only leads to tragedy.

Victor feels like he spends _years_ with Yuuri as he steps into conflict, into confusion. It is beautifully desolate, a wasteland with blue skies and bluer hearts.

And then, partway through an utterly flat piece– a straight line not born of exhaustion, but one of resignation, of unchanging realities– Yuuri jumps.

There is hardly any warning– a flick of a skate, flipping forward on the same foot, and then a flawless triple axel.

The crowd doesn’t react for several seconds afterward, long enough that Victor sees something crumble in Yuuri’s posture. Then, as if part of a hive mind, the crowd screams in unison.

It’s as if the floodgates open, and Victor watches in astonishment as Yuuri starts ripping through jumps frenetically, each one feeling like a revelation, building towards something greater.

There are quadruple jumps, each climbing in difficulty, in such rapid succession that Victor feels short of breath just watching him. Yuuri nearly stumbles through a quadruple loop, tilting dangerously on the landing– a valiant attempt that almost ended in tragedy. A quadruple lutz, something he’s never pulled off before, smooth as silk.

And then that combination jump, the quadruple toe loop to the triple flip to the triple salchow, feels triumphant. It feels like a conclusion, the ending to a long story fraught with failures and false starts that ends in hope and salvation. 

But the song isn’t finished, and from the few (hundred) times he’s seen the free skate video, Victor knows that the last jump is another triple axel, to begin and end the final section with the same jump, to provide a sense of parallelism.

There’s no way that the triple axel will hold up to scrutiny after that combination– the joy that it inspired. It will just be an embellishment– a halfhearted effort after the important part, so to speak.

Yuuri picks up speed, whizzing across the ice as though he was in a different sport altogether– much faster than what would be needed, judging by how he did his first triple axel.

And then he jumps.

And Victor knows he was wrong.

Because _that..._

_That was the triumphant ending that the program deserves._

…

 **IceLife**  
YUURI KATSUKI MAKES HISTORY BY RATIFYING THE FIRST QUAD AXEL IN COMPETITION AT THE WORLD FIGURE SKATING CHAMPIONSHIPS!

 **SkateCentral**  
Watch our broadcast of the World Figure Skating championships at the link below! This was a historical competition that you definitely don’t want to miss out on!

 **GuinnessBook**  
This might be a world record for most record-breaking happening at a single competition!

> **221bbbaker**  
>  No shit, Sherlock! The short program world record was broken TWICE, the free skate world record was ALSO BROKEN TWICE, an Asian skater made it on the podium at Worlds for the first time in HALF A CENTURY, and………… oh I don’t know, the #QUADAXEL WAS RATIFIED????????

**ShaunaBravo**  
My skin is clear, my crops are watered, Yuuri Katsuki ratified the #QUADAXEL

 **firetigermelon3**  
**@iceicebabyy** are you alright? Usually you’re all over all the threads, especially considering #yuurikatsuki

> **iceicebabyy**  
>  **@firetigermelon3** sorry i was literally dying because Yuuri Katsuki removed my ability to breathe. The sheer energy in this arena– the power that Victor Nikiforov and Yuuri Katsuki hold I– I’m literally– I’ll get back to you once I’m alive again. Meanwhile, #QUADAXEL QUAD AXEL QUAD AXEL QUAD QUAD A
> 
> **ohklahoma**  
>  I’m literally sobbing Yuuri did so well how did the judges score him like that??

…

 **phichit+chu**  
[video: ISU footage of Worlds, Yuuri Katsuki’s now-famous quadruple axel]  
[video: a repost of Yuuri’s quad axel from months ago]

 **phichit+chu** told you so #QUADAXEL #Worlds #yuurikatsuki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was planning on having a few more scenes to do reveals to everyone but Victor, but they weren't turning out right so I cut them. I've been very busy with school lately (and I hate being on the computer for 8+ hours a day for classes) so this chapter refused to get written. Thank you for your patience! 
> 
> I'll probably come back and edit this at some point, but this is the plot now i guess.
> 
> next time: the podium, some more shenanigans, and the reveal for the rest of the people.
> 
> could i have put that in this chapter? yes. would it have taken another two weeks? probably.


	12. Hasetsu Castle

“This is bullshit.”

“Phichit, please.”

“This is _bullshit_.”

“ _Phichit_.”

“If it weren’t for the laws of the land–”

“ _Phichit, stop!_ I’ve already done way better than I could have ever hoped to.”

Phichit puts down his phone, which he had been furiously typing away at as soon as Victor Nikiforov’s scores were announced. It is open to Twitter, and Yuuri does not doubt that, if he searched for the trending tags, his name would be one of the top results, entirely due to Phichit’s sense of righteousness.

Phichit jabs a finger into the blue of Yuuri’s costume. “You deserved to win, Yuuri. I don’t care what the ISU says, but you _should have won_ , and I want the world to know that.”

He groans, shoulders dropping in resignation. There’s nothing to be done when Phichit is on a social media rampage. “I’m just happy I can be standing next to _Victor Nikiforov_ on the ice,” Yuuri says wonderingly. “I _placed_ at Worlds.”

“You should have _won_ Worlds.”

Yuuri shakes his head. “You’re biased, Phichit. Victor’s base difficulty was probably higher than my own, and he had a very clean skate. And, you know, he’s _Victor Nikiforov_.”

“Victor’s skate was the _same_ difficulty as yours, at best. And _he_ didn’t ratify a _quad-fucking-axel_ in his skate.”

And with that, Phichit goes back to typing on his phone.

Yuuri feels a vague need to go to the kiss and cry and warn Victor that Phichit will be inciting the handful of people on the internet who actually care about Yuuri’s skating into an unfounded rage.

He does not end up doing that. _There aren’t enough Yuuri fans for it to really matter_ , he thinks.

…

 **phichit+chu**  
#yuurikatsuki SHOULD HAVE WON WORLDS! HE RATIFIED THE 4A AND HAD THE BEST ARTISTRY TODAY AND THIS IS A HEINOUS CASE OF SCORE INFLATION IN THIS ESSAY I WILL–

> **eye-ess-yuu**  
>  WHERE’S THE ESSAY OP
> 
> **Fretzeldurmf**  
>  OP WHERE’S THE ESSAY

**angelicA**  
Y’all calm down your precious #yuurikatsuki basically fell on that 4L Victor Nikiforov had a cleaner skate, and hit all FIVE of his quads. Instead of yelling about a questionably deserved silver can we talk about how JJ Leroy was once again ROBBED.

>  **forthe4rce**  
>  **@angelicA** Who the FUCK cares about JJ Leroy when the ISU refuses to change their inflationary biases for Nikiforov’s score. He’s good but he’s old and waning– let #yuurikatsuki take up his mantle.
>
>> **viknikownsme**  
>  **@forthe4rce** This is heresy– Victor deserves the win! He’s not the Living Legend for nothing!

 **Buzzfeed**  
The skating world is swept by controversy as accusations of score inflation are flung at Victor Nikiforov for his fifth consecutive gold medal at Worlds this weekend. Are you team #victornikiforov or team #yuurikatsuki?

 **iceicebabyy**  
I love Victor Nikiforov as much as the next fan, but this is clearly a case of inflation from the ISU. Point me at a valid argument that says that Yuuri Katsuki did not deserve to win after pulling off a QUADRUPLE AXEL at the END of the skate when most skaters don’t even have the energy to SPIN. They couldn’t even give him a good record-breaking margin– breaking the world record by less than a point means SHIT when it comes to ISU inflation.

> **firetigermelon3**  
>  **@iceicebabyy** yes pREACH #yuurikatsuki’s stamina is GOD TIER and he really deserves the whole world. **@CowalskyAnalysis** do u have stuff to back me up?
>
>> **CowalskyAnalysis**  
>  **@firetigermelon3** I got you. Here are some videos (warmup, FS, EX) from just THIS year’s Japanese Nationals. Notice the fact that just in the WARMUP, #yuurikatsuki did all that, and then proceeded to skate his free without any issues. And then that exhibition with FOUR successful quads (SIX attempted quads) stacked towards the back half of the program. These aren’t new videos– Japanese skating fans have known for years that Katsuki’s selling points are his artistry and his ability to hold on and do the impossible. 

…

Trending Tags:

#yuurikatsuki  
#QUADAXEL  
#ISUInflation  
#FNAF  
#ninjashouyou  
#victornikiforov

…

The weight of the medal is heavy around Victor’s neck, but not in the way it normally is. Victor is used to the gold feeling comforting, triumphant, but this time, it feels like it’s strangling him.

Five points. There were five points between himself and Yuuri, and not in the direction that Victor thought it should have been. Victor’s free skate absolutely did not deserve to have been scored higher than Yuuri’s, regardless of how many quad flips he could put in them.

That’s not even humility– everyone knows that Victor’s modesty had disappeared when he’d gotten his second gold medal at Junior Worlds. Basic math says that, regardless of how precarious that quad loop had been, it had been rotated and landed, and so therefore could not have been deducted nearly enough points to justify a _quadruple axel_ not catapulting the technical points sky-high.

And yet, as Victor glances to his right, it doesn’t seem like Yuuri really minds. He’s clutching his silver medal in his hands reverently, but his eyes keep drifting towards Victor. 

Victor’s lips tingle faintly.

When Yuuri’s hands slip hesitantly around Victor’s waist for the pictures, Victor whispers solemnly out of the corner of his mouth, “You should be in the middle.”

The internet will spend hours trying to read his lips, because all the photos from this instant depict Yuuri’s face in a growing state of panic, frantically waving his bouquet around as he vehemently protests.

On his left, Christophe laughs heartily. “You never say that to me when I’m in second, Victor!” He smiles, the bronze on his chest glittering. 

“I only say what is true, _mon ami._ ” Victor shoots back playfully.

…

The three medalists hand off their bouquets and skate around the rink together, waving at the crowd. People stretch their hands out, some just for a touch, others for autographs or gifts. Victor drifts closer to the edge, attention caught by a flower crown that a girl is brandishing.

Yakov has always told him that he was too airheaded for his own good.

Something seizes the medal on his chest, tugging violently. The ribbon tightens around his neck, and Victor chokes, his feet nearly sliding out from under him. The gold medal is clutched in large, rough hands, belonging to a man leaning almost all the way out of the stands, broad face twisted in a scowl.

“You don’t deserve this, you cheating piece of shit!” he shrieks, spittle flying everywhere. He hops on the boards, perched like a particularly ugly gargoyle, to try and lift the medal off of Victor’s head. 

Victor can’t see anything but the madman, his senses dulled to the pressure around his neck.

Then, all of a sudden, the ribbon eases, and Victor can breathe again. His vision, tunneled and edged in black, clears.

Yuuri Katsuki kneels between Victor and the boards, one knee pressed on the back of the man and his arm firmly locked behind him. His face is hard, and far calmer than what Victor would have expected.

“Security!” Yuuri calls, his voice colder than the ice beneath their feet.

It is mere seconds before a pair of uniformed men appear and haul the man up, escorting him away quickly.

Victor, Yuuri, and Chris quickly get off the ice, and Yakov hands Victor a bottle of water and rubs soothing circles into his back. Though he tries not to show it, his hands tremble violently and he can hardly swallow.

And yet, while even Chris is pale and his hands tremble, Yuuri is speaking to his coach calmly, and the woman– Yuuko– didn’t even appear to have batted an eye.

Victor carefully lifts the medal off of his neck and places it around Yakov’s. 

“I’m going to the restroom,” he says, uncharacteristically quiet, and leaves.

…

 **SkatingScoop**  
Crazed skating fan ATTACKS the Living Legend!

> **viknikownsme**  
>  *and Yuuri Katsuki saves his life!

**austriasbae**  
Was anyone gonna tell me that all the Japanese are ninjas or was I supposed to find out in a post-awards video from Worlds?

 **IceLife**  
Video: MAN ATTACKS VICTOR NIKIFOROV, KATSUKI TO THE RESCUE

 **WorldOfSports**  
Man in police custody for assault on Victor Nikiforov– no reported injuries

> **firetigermelon3**  
>  pLEASE start putting Katsuki Yuuri in these headlines he deserves to have these articles pop up when people search his name. 

**iceicebabyy**  
hhhhhhng this guy can skate AND casually do insane martial arts??? what next????

>  **DancingLeslie**  
>  **@iceicebabyy** he can also dance! His ballet steps are GORGEOUS
>
>> **christophee-g**  
>  **@iceicebabyy @Dancing Leslie** I have on good authority that he can also pole dance ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) 
>> 
>> **iceicebabyy**  
>  AHHHHHHHH HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT WHAT HAVE YOU DONE????? ALSO WHAT HE CAN DANCE????? gasdlghasdfl i’m speechless

…

The water is cold against Victor’s face, but rather than being soothing, all he can think of is the rising heat in his cheeks as the blood was trapped in his skull. He cups his hands under the faucet, but can’t get a decent amount of water in them– his hands are shaking too much.

The door opens behind him, but Victor doesn’t bother glancing back. He grips the edge of the sink, curling his fingers around the lip as he tries to stop shaking.

“Victor?” The voice is soft, and warm, and ever so familiar.

“I’m alright,” he says tremulously.

“Victor, can I touch you?” Yuuri asks, a reassuring presence behind Victor. Without lifting his gaze, Victor nods.

A hand, searing hot against his spine, settles between his shoulder blades. It rubs in soothing circles, the warmth spreading from the hand to his ribs and in his chest, radiating comfort.

Slowly, Victor’s hands relax and fall limply to his sides. He stands to face Yuuri, who doesn’t say anything but opens his arms.

Victor leans on his shoulder, Yuuri too short to properly envelop him but doing his damndest to try. Yuuri shifts his head and plants a gentle kiss into Victor’s hair, hands continuing to rub circles into his back.

Finally, Victor feels a bit more like himself. He lets himself, just for a moment, forget about what had happened, pouting a bit against the fabric of Yuuri’s costume.

“Is my hair really getting that thin?” he asks. Though his voice isn’t as dramatically dismayed as it could have been, Yuuri doesn’t comment on it.

“Your hair is beautiful, Victor,” Yuuri soothes, and he has the gall to sound absolutely sincere.

“I’m an old man, Yuuri– practically balding,” he mumbles into Yuuri’s shoulder, almost absentmindedly. He’s more occupied by the snow-clean smell– is it deodorant? Something in the costume fabric? 

Victor can almost feel the moment when Yuuri grows serious. “Victor.” He takes a breath, as if steeling himself to talk to his idol.

Victor lifts his head and steps back, scrubbing at his cheeks with his hands to try and wipe away the shock-pale sheen. 

“Victor, I need you to know that you _absolutely_ did not cheat, okay, and no one thinks you did.” Yuuri says insistently, dark eyes holding his own. “Whatever anyone says, you deserved your win, and you shouldn’t think less of yourself.”

Victor cannot do anything but blink.

_Is he even real? Who in their right mind would think that Yuuri’s skate didn’t deserve to win with a QUADRUPLE axel?_

“You’re joking,” his voice comes out flat, and Yuuri flinches.

“I-”

“No, listen. You ratified the _first quad axel_ , you landed your first quad lutz in competition, and you _literally_ told the story of your life through your free.” Yuuri’s head jerks up, eyes wide. He takes a breath, as if to protest, but Victor keeps going. “I know skating, and I know that you absolutely _should have won_ , no doubts about it.”

“But, Victor-”

And suddenly, Victor knows exactly what he’s going to do.

He holds up one finger, stopping Yuuri in the middle of his protest.

“The first rule of being my boyfriend is that you cannot think so little of yourself.” He declares with a proud grin. Yuuri’s face floods vermillion. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out.

Victor winks. “After all, you should have faith in my taste in men.”

Yuuri splutters, as if torn between his own need to be humble and the need to have faith in Victor.

Victor feels a lot better now, spirits lifted by the absolutely ridiculous man in front of him.

He grabs Yuuri’s hand, the boy in question still stammering out _“boyfriend? I- wh- Victor– BOYFRIEND??”_

He drags them to the bathroom door, but before he opens it, he turns to Yuuri, whose face is still bright red, and leans in.

“Thank you for saving me,” he whispers, and plants a kiss on the tip of Yuuri’s nose.

_Huh._

_I didn’t know people could physically get that red._

…

 **v-nikiforov**  
[photo: a selfie of Victor and Yuuri, each holding a champagne glass. Victor is wearing the silver medal, Yuuri the gold. A faint blush dances on Yuuri’s cheeks. In the background, over Yuuri’s shoulder, Chris holds up a peace sign, the bronze medal sitting on his chest.]

 **v-nikiforov** how Worlds should have gone (PR PEOPLE YOU CANNOT MAKE ME TAKE THIS DOWN). #yuurikatsuki #FSWC #quadaxel

…

“Hey Yuuri?”

Yuuri’s face is still slightly red, and his fingers keep drifting towards his face. His eyes are very slightly glazed over, turned in the direction of Victor Nikiforov, who is wearing Yuuri’s medal around his neck.

Victor isn’t entirely unaffected, either, for there are high spots of color in his cheeks that cannot be attributed to alcohol, and he keeps smoothing his hands over the silver medal, a wondering smile on his face.

“Yuuri!”

He snaps out of it, and finally turns to look at Phichit.

“What? Sorry.”

Phichit waves a hand, dismissing the apology. “How did you do that today? Take down a man who outweighs you by half?”

Yuuri blinks, contemplating, then shrugs casually.

“Yuuko wanted someone to take judo with her.” Yuuri stands on his tiptoes, looking for his friend, and finding her next to the snacks, corralling her husband and their children away from the alcohol.

“No one else was willing to spar with her.”

Yuuri thinks for a moment, fingers playing along the edges of the gold medal resting on his sternum.

“She probably could have done it faster than I did.”

Phichit watches the tiny woman intimidate her husband, a man who definitely weighs over twice her own weight, effortlessly, and shudders.

_Never underestimate Yuuko Nishigori._

...

Your friend **Yuuri Katsuki** is on Instagram as **katsuki-katsudon**

**Follow [requested]**

…

 **v-nikiforov** has begun following **katsuki-katsudon** on Instagram

…

 **katsuki-katsudon** has begun following **v-nikiforov** on Instagram

…

You have two unread messages from **phichit+chu**

 **phichit+chu**  
Oh, so you’ll follow Victor Nikiforov but not your BEST FRIEND???

 **phichit+chu**  
I see how it is.

…

 **phichit+chu**  
Victor, tell Yuuri to stop ignoring me on Instagram!

 **v-nikiforov**  
Sorry, he’s been busy! I’ll tell him to get back to you after we’re done.

 **phichit+chu**  
“After we’re done”?? With what??

 **phichit+chu**  
VICTOR NIKIFOROV WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MY SON

…

“Victor, tell me what I’m doing wrong on the quad flip!”

“Just a second!” Victor puts the phone down and skates out to Yuuri, who is in the middle of the ice.

“And after, I had an idea for an exhibition skate.”

Victor smiles indulgently. “Your skate this year was record-breaking.”

“But next year, we’ll be history-making.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri smells like ice, and what was Victor's first love? go to ch 11 if you didn't catch it. this chapter is titled hasetsu castle bc NINJAS. 
> 
> I finished a story??? wow look at me go that's a first
> 
> in all honesty this was gonna be four chapters of people seeing Yuuri do cool things. don't ask me how this happened, because i don't know.
> 
> thank you to everyone who commented! every comment on this fic was a hit of serotonin that I desperately needed, and I appreciate every single one of them! this got way more traction than i ever could have imagined!
> 
> I'll probably go back and fix the wording in the future, but for now, it's time to write my applications （´＿｀）


End file.
